LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



Christless Nations 



BISHOP J. M. THOBURN, D.D. 

A SERIES OF ADDRESSES ON CHRISTLESS NATIONS AND 

KINDRED SUBJECTS DELIVERED AT SYRACUSE 

UNIVERSITY ON THE GRAVES 

FOUNDATION, 1 89 5 





'^IVH'bOia 



NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 

CINCINNATI : CRANSTON & CURTS 

1895 



^^9 



^^\^ 



Copyright by 

HUNT & EATON, 

1895. 



The Library 

OF Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Composition, electrotyping, 
printing, and binding by 

Hunt & Eaton, 
150 Fifth Ave., New York. 



PREFACE. 



A RETURNED missionary who attempts to 
speak on the general subject of missions 
quickly discovers that most of his auditors expect 
him to give some account of his own special work, 
or of his personal observations on the mission field, 
and it may even happen that a hint will be conveyed 
to him that it would be better to leave to others the 
discussion of missionary policy and principles and 
confine himself to his own more legitimate task. 
In other words, the missionary is expected to be a 
reporter only, and not aspire to the higher privi- 
leges of the editor's chair. The following lectures 
were prepared with a full knowledge of the peculiar 
standard by which such addresses are judged; but 
having had not only a long experience abroad, but 
a very wide view of the missionary situation as it 
is to-day in the United States, I did not feel at 
liberty to choose narrow, even though more popu- 
lar, topics. I am profoundly, and even painfully, 
convinced that the Christians of America do not 
so much need more information from the mission 
field as a willingness to obey the commandment 
of the ascending Saviour, a commandment so long 



4 PREFACE. 

and so grievously neglected. I have no longer any 
doubt concerning the possibility of victory in the 
field abroad, but the Church at home is not pre- 
pared for victory, and has little thought of trying 
to utilize it when it comes. 

The Christians of the present generation, espe- 
cially in England and America, are face to face 
with the most startling responsibility which any 
Christians have ever borne. They are not meet- 
ing this responsibility; they do not realize what it 
means. They should, by all means, gather all 
possible information concerning the foreign field, 
but in the meantime let them study their own rela- 
tion to the work. The present demand upon the 
home Churches may be considered heavy enough 
by some, but it is trifling when compared with the 
demands which will soon come from the other side 
of the globe. God assures us that our claim upon 
him, unspeakably great before, becomes still more 
enhanced after we become his reconciled children. 
By the same rule our missionary obligations do not 
cease when the Hindu or the Buddhist becomes 
a Christian ; they only become permanent. The 
time is very near when converts will be added in 
India at the rate of one hundred thousand a year, 
and twenty-five thousand a year in China. When 
that time comes Christian sympathy will flow out 
to those newborn thousands in an ever-widening 
and ever-deepening current, and the missionary 
enterprise will assume a new phase undreamed of 
before. 



PREFACE. 5 

Farseeing Christians perceive that America is 
destined to be, in a broad and yet very true sense 
of the word, the great missionary nation of the 
world. It will be her peculiar mission in history 
to Christianize and elevate all the nations of the 
earth. The great movement which was inaugu- 
rated about a century ago will assume immense 
proportions as the years go by, and fifty years 
hence will probably be one of the greatest move- 
ments on the globe. We should study such a 
movement carefully and prayerfully, and ponder 
well our own relation to it. If we may venture to 
hope that God has, in the multitude of his tender 
mercies, ** winked at" the past inattention and 
disobedience of his Church in neglecting her com- 
mission to evangelize the nations, such a hope can 
hardly be indulged in the future. The providential 
tokens are too many, the calls are too loud and too 
constant, the Spirit's promptings are too clear and 
too universal to permit us to disobey longer with- 
out incurring guilt before both heaven and earth. 

While the following lectures deal somewhat 
freely with what might be called the home aspects 
of the missionary enterprise, the foreign work is by 
no means passed over in silence. The work is one, 
and the workers at home and abroad are bound 
together by inseparable interests. New questions 
are coming to the surface in the foreign field, some 
of which are briefly discussed, while questions of 
policy of long standing receive the attention which 
they have long merited. 



6 PREFACE. 

Missionary work has its own peculiarities, but 
after all it does not differ so very widely from 
ordinary Christian work. It is, for the most part, 
ordinary Christian work under extraordinary con- 
ditions. Hence the reader of the following pages 
may find occasional hints which may possibly be 
of some value in the ordinary home field. A re- 
turned missionary who once gave a lecture before 
the students of a theological seminary was told by 
one of the professors that his remarks could not 
have been better adapted to the wants of the 
students present if prepared with sole reference to 
their future work in the United States. In the 
hope that some of God's workers at home and 
abroad may profit by these hastily prepared lec- 
tures, the manuscript has been placed at the dis- 
posal of the authorities of the University. 

Syracuse, N. F., May 2, 1895. J. M. T. 



SYLLABUS, 



PAGE 

The CHRISTLES3 Nations 9 

Introductory — Christ still on earth — Found only among 
his own — What is the loss of non-Christians? — 
The influence of Christianity — Ten hundred millions 
without Christ — Merely nominal work will not do — 
Bearing Christ to the nations — Our privilege 
slighted — What is a Christian nation ? 

Missionary Possibilities 41 

Introductory — Careful inquiry needed — The home sit- 
uation — A startling illustration — A practicable plan — 
Demand for workers — The world's gates opening — 
Better plans coming into favor — Power of a Chris- 
tian minority — Estimating results — Our opportuni- 
ties. 

Woman in the Mission Field 75 

Introductory — Woman's era — Woman's missionary so- 
cieties — The zenana — Quiet progress — A widening 
sphere — Female evangelists — An anointed leader — 
Administrative duties — A new sphere — Medical 
work. 



8 SYLLABUS. 

PAGE 

Missionary Polity iii 

Introductory — A missionary constituency needed — 
The home management — The work vs. the society — 
Limitations of authority — The missionary commis- 
sariat — Planting — Organization — Avoid a narrow 
policy — Follow up success — Family and national 
lines. 

New Testament Missions 145 

Introductory — Roman and British empires — The An- 
glo-Saxon dispersion — Spiritual standard — Vivifying 
lifeless communities — The call to service — Men of 
the people — Meeting an emergency — Changed con- 
ditions — The teachers of New Testament times — 
Present-day converts — Flexible organization. 

Wayside View^s 181 

Introductory — Missionary devotion — Separation from 
children — Spiritual life — Confidence needed — The 
present social crisis — Living links — The instinct of 
victory. 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS, 

AND 

OTHER ADDRESSES. 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

SOME years ago an elderly minister who 
wished to devote his latest years to the 
advocacy of the missionary enterprise asked 
me what, in my opinion, was the strongest plea 
for missions which could be presented to in- 
teHigent persons in Christian lands. He had 
just been surprised and almost startled by 
hearing me say that it was a mistake to sup- 
pose that a faithful portrayal of the moral state 
of heathen nations was the surest way to enlist 
the sympathy and aid of Christians in America, 
and he even seemed a little perplexed by my 
willing testimony in favor of some praiseworthy 
virtues which I had found among the people 
of India. It is too often assumed that Paul's 
terrible arraignment of heathenism as it existed 
in some parts of the Roman empire, and es- 



12 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

pecially in Rome itself during the first cen- 
tury, must serve as an accurate description of 
the moral state of all non-Christian nations in 
all ages of the world. This, however, is a great 
mistake ; and even if it were true it would not 
constitute a healthy basis for an appeal in 
behalf of an immediate and determined effort 
to evangelize the world. Various motives 
might fairly enough be appealed to in such a 
case and a multitude of facts cited to show 
how much all nations need the blessings which 
only the Gospel can bestow ; but if asked to 
state in few words what it is which makes the 
condition of the non-Christian nations most 
deplorable, and at the same time places all 
Christian nations under the strongest obliga- 
tions to help them, I should simply say that 
such nations are, as Paul reminded the Ephe- 
sian Christians that they had once been, 
'^ without Christ.'* It is not that they have 
never heard of his name, that they have never 
felt the influence of what we call Christianity, 
that they have never been brought into con- 
tact with Christian institutions or Christian 
civilization, but that Christ is not personally 
known to them, is not among them in the 
sense in which he promised to be with his 
people for evermore, and that they are deprived 
of all the unspeakable privileges which those 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 1 3 

who enjoy personal fellowship with him so 
freely receive. 

CHRIST STILL ON EARTH. 

The personal presence of Jesus Christ among 
his living disciples is the greatest fact in the 
religious world to-day. It is not so much a 
great truth as a great fact, around which the 
leading truths of the Christian system gather, 
and on which they must always largely depend 
w^hen presented to an unbelieving or doubting 
w^orld. Nothing could have been more ex- 
plicit than our Saviour's farewell assurance to 
his disciples that he would be with them 
always, or than his earlier promise that he 
would be present in every assembly of his 
people, even though the number should not 
exceed two or three. This promised presence 
was not to be visible, but it was to be none 
the less personal and real. In his farewell dis- 
course our Saviour comforted his disciples 
with the assurance that after a brief separation 
he w^ould return to them again, and, while in- 
visible and unknown to the world, would be 
manifested as a living presence to his own, 
with whom he would establish a fellowship 
never to be broken. In harmony with these 
teachings we find the early Christians familiar 
with the idea as well as with the experience of 



14 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

companionship with the risen Son of God. 
They did not merely believe on him — they 
knew him. When Paul was defending his 
ministry among the Galatian Christians he 
appealed to the time when it pleased the 
Father to reveal his Son to his inner conscious- 
ness, and when, in old age, he was about to 
depart he was able to say in holy, confident 
triumph, *^ I know whom I have believed." 
He had been stopped in his blind career by 
this same Jesus on the Damascus highway ; 
he had seen him in vision in the temple ; had 
been commissioned by him to go far hence to 
the Gentiles ; and again, in the tower of Anto- 
nia, when an infuriated multitude clamored for 
his blood, this same Jesus had spoken to him 
and told him how he must yet bear witness in 
imperial Rome. 

The apostle Paul w^as an exceptional man, 
but in knowing his risen Lord and walking in 
fellowship with him his happy lot was only 
exceptional in some of its peculiar phases. 
Millions of living Christians are to-day able to 
bear v/itness to a personal knowledge of Jesus 
Christ. As in the case of Paul this knowledge 
is sometimes subjective and sometimes object- 
ive. To most there seems to be a mystical, 
and yet very clear and personal, manifestation 
of Christ to the inner consciousness. The 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. I 5 

awakened sinner seeks a Saviour, hears of 
Jesus, believes the testimony, and emerges into 
light. His sins vanish, his darkness flees away, 
and he discovers a newborn love in his heart 
for the Saviour in whom he has believed. He 
does not pause to analyze his thoughts, but he 
is conscious in his heart of hearts that he loves 
Jesus Christ as a divine Saviour. Very soon, 
possibly at the same moment, he discovers 
that he loves God as his heavenly Father. 
He knows nothing of theology, has never given 
a thought to the subject of the Trinity, but he 
opens John's gospel and reads, ** If a man love 
me, he will keep m.y words: and my Father will 
love him, and we will come unto him, and make 
our abode with him." The new disciple finds 
that the promise given at the beginning has 
been verified in his own experience. He 
knows God as his Father and Christ as his 
Saviour, both being revealed to him by the 
Holy Spirit. This personal Saviour is some- 
times recognized as an inner manifestation, 
made, as it were, in the very holy of holies of 
the believing heart ; but oftentimes it is more 
like the outward presence of a companion or 
guide. The experience of the two brethren 
walking out to Emmaus at eventide is often 
repeated in our day. The risen Lord may 
come as a loving friend, or he may pass on 



l6 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

before as a faithful guide, or he may assume 
the form of a victorious leader ; but in every 
case the distinctive fact which we need to note 
is that he lives among his own, knows them 
and is known of them, and through them car- 
ries forward his great designs concerning the 
future of the human race. 

FOUND ONLY AMONG HIS OWN. 

Just here, however, we are confronted by a 
most momentous question. If the world's 
Messiah is in very deed alive and present in 
our world, is his presence confined to those 
regions where his disciples are found ? Is he 
not the rightful sovereign of all the world, and 
did he not assure his followers that all power 
in earth and heaven had been given into his 
hands? In what sense, then, can we say that 
whole nations are without Christ? 

As heir to all things in earth and heaven, 
and as the disposer of human affairs, our 
Saviour, Christ, is no doubt in this world to- 
day ; and we do well to reflect that he who 
walked about among the villages of Galilee is 
to-day walking about among the nations, dis- 
posing of crowns and thrones according to his 
sovereign will, guiding in all the events, great 
and small, which take place among men, and 
causing all things to work together so as to 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 1/ 

hasten the consummation of his great purpose 
to make all the kingdoms of this world his own. 
But as the world's Saviour he is found only 
with his own. We need not pause to ask why 
this is so, but we cannot give too earnest heed 
to the startling fact that since the day of Pen- 
tecost Jesus Christ has been made known to 
the world only through the medium of his own 
disciples. He may go before them, may pre- 
pare the way for them, as in the case of Cor- 
nelius, but the disciple and the Master are 
inseparable in the ordinary administration of 
the Master's work. He has chosen us as co- 
workers with himself, made us his visible repre- 
sentatives among men, and assured us that we 
shall do his work if we are careful to do his will 
and work in his name. The disciples of to-day 
differ from those who walked in visible fellow- 
ship with Jesus in Galilee in that they are 
more highly favored than the first disciples. 
The latter walked and talked with the Master, 
shared his power, and at times performed won- 
derful works in his name ; but they labored 
under all the limitations which time and place 
imposed. The Saviour could only be present 
in one place at a given time, could only minis- 
ter to one group of disciples, and could only 
engage in one particular undertaking. But 
under the present dispensation the Spirit re- 



1 8 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

veals his personal presence in a million hearts 
or a million homes at the same moment. 
There is no limit to his ^' wheresoever " save 
the condition that living disciples must com- 
mand his presence ; but this condition, bound 
up as it is in his first great commission, is 
invariable in all climes and all ages. 

We are thus brought face to face with the 
startling fact that on the disciples of Jesus 
Christ rests the responsibility of giving Christ 
to the nations which as yet do not know him ; 
but before considering the full measure of this 
responsibility it may be well to take a glance 
at the condition of those most unfortunate 
multitudes who belong to what might be called 
the Christless nations. In losing the knowl- 
edge and personal presence of Christ what 
else do these nations lose? What has this 
presence been worth to us or to the nation to 
which we belong? 

WHAT IS THE LOSS OF NON-CHRISTIANS? 

In the first place, those who are without 
Christ lose his personal ministrations. The 
Jesus who meets his people invisibly to-day is 
the same Jesus who journeyed with them in 
visible form in the days of his humanity. 
There was only one Bethany in Judea, but 
every village in a Christian land becomes a 



THE CHRISTLES^ NATIONS. I9 

Bethany in our more favored day. There was 
only one Nain in Israel, but the Man of Naza- 
reth now stands waiting to meet and comfort 
every funeral procession which wends its 
mournful way to the village cemetery. That 
which was exceptional in Galilee has become 
universal in Christendom. The risen Son of 
God waits to enter every abode of poverty, to 
shed light upon every darkened home, to com- 
fort everyone that mourns, to walk serenely 
upon the waves of every stormy sea, to rescue 
every endangered soul, to lift up the fallen, to 
strengthen the weak, to reclaim the erring, to 
turn despair into hope, darkness into light, and 
out from the very shadow of death itself to bring 
a life radiant with immortal joy. We thus see 
that the nations have more at stake than a 
mere question of fact concerning the resurrec- 
tion of Christ. If Jesus lives at all he lives to 
minister to the most needy of the human race, 
and every community which has failed to re- 
ceive him is daily and hourly losing blessings 
compared with which every other form of 
earthly good is but worthless dross. 

In the next place, we are to remember that 
Christ lives and works among men in the per- 
son of his disciples. Every true believer bears 
the name of his Master, and is solemnly re- 
minded that he cannot gain access to God's 



20 THE. CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

mercy seat in any other name. He is made a 
child of God, a member of the heavenly family 
in which God is the Father and Jesus Christ 
the Elder Brother. As such he becomes heir 
to all that the Elder Brother inherits; he 
bears his spiritual image, and in an important 
sense shares his mission. As it was a part of 
the Master's mission to manifest God, so it 
became a most important part of the disciples* 
mission to manifest Christ to men ; and as the 
Master lived to save the perishing, and to 
minister in every possible way to the wants of 
those in need, so the disciple, if true to his 
calling, will ever be found absorbed in doing 
the same kind of work. For such a life, or 
rather for such a mission, he receives a special 
call and a special anointing ; and he goes forth 
to bear his part on the busy stage of life up- 
held by the promise that he shall not only do 
the works of his Master, but even greater 
works than any which the people of Galilee 
and Judea ever witnessed. We thus see how 
it happens that an immense multitude of 
Christian men are blessing the world by their 
active work and silent influence to-day. Their 
presence and their usefulness are owing solely 
to the fact that Christ is with them. The 
world does not know and cannot understand 
how much it owes to these disciples. Eacli 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 21 

one is a glowing light in the midst of dense 
darkness. They are truly the salt of the earth, 
the one conserving element in the midst of 
corrupting agencies of a thousand kinds. They 
are the helpers of universal humanity, and 
many of them show such power in grappling 
with the powers of evil, such courage in facing 
danger, such hope in battling against despair, 
and such divine resources in saving the sinning 
and the perishing, that even worldly men often 
feel constrained to admit that they are sup- 
ported and directed by a power and wisdom 
which must come from above. 

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The presence of Christ in a Christian nation 
is still further attested by what is sometimes 
called the '' influence of Christianity,** which 
is but another name for the influence of a 
personal Christ. There is nothing tangible 
about this influence, nothing that can be 
formulated in either figures or words, and 
yet it is felt everywhere. It is found em- 
bodied in the spirit of every code of laws 
in Christendom ; it is exhibited in the con- 
stantly increasing eleemosynary institutions 
of all kinds; it pervades the literature of the 
day; it animates every reform movement; it 
softens the rough hand of war ; it refines and 



^^ THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

ennobles civilization, and, in short, seems to 
permeate the very atmosphere with a health- 
ful spirit of life and hope. Childhood be- 
comes sacred wherever the story of the Babe 
of Bethlehem is known. Womanhood be- 
comes ennobled wherever the history of Mary 
of Bethany, or of Mary of Magdala, or still 
more of Mary of Bethlehem, has been told. 
The poor are moved by new aspirations, and 
humanity seems animated by nev/ hopes. 
Wherever the name of Jesus Christ has been 
carried man has learned how to open the 
prison house of despair and to see light beyond 
the darkness of the grave. 

Tliis invisible and yet wonderfully pervasive 
influence has been strikingly illustrated in 
the astonishing political transformation which 
Japan has experienced during the past forty 
years. Alone among all non-Christian peoples 
the Japanese have freely accepted Christian 
ideas and, to a great extent, Christian institu- 
tions, and have thus made a great stride in 
the direction of Christian civilization, although 
not yet formally accepting the Christian re- 
ligion. The result is marvelous beyond any- 
thing yet witnessed in human history. Of 
all non-Christian peoples it may be said that, 
since the beginning of our era, at least, none 
of them have, without external aid, been able 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 23 

to make any advance in the arts of civilization, 
none have been able to display the slightest 
inventive genius, and none, except a very small 
minority, have been able to rise above the low 
level of grinding poverty. Century after century 
passes without a single invention, no matter how 
simple, among one half the human race. Cen- 
tury after century passes only to witness the 
gradual but steady and relentless subsidence 
of the masses of people into utter poverty 
and wretchedness. Christ among men is not 
only the hope of immortality to mankind, the 
eternal pledge of a better life than that of 
earth, but he is the hope of the industrial 
world, of the social world, and of the intellec- 
tual world. Without him the nations have no 
better future than their dismal past, and all 
hope of future progress may as well be dis- 
missed from the thought of the world. In 
whatever direction w^e turn we are met w^ith 
ever-increasing proofs that our world has 
great and urgent needs which only can be met 
in the presence of the Saviour of men. 

TEN HUNDRED MILLIONS WITHOUT CHRIST. 

These and other considerations of like 
character will no doubt bring very vividly be- 
fore the mind of a Christian believer a sense 
of the unspeakable loss of those who are born 



24 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

and grow up without Christ ; but, after all, the 
strongest appeal of this kind is that which is 
made to our own hearts as individual Chris- 
tians, What is Christ to each of us to-day? 
What has he been to us since we have per- 
sonally known him ? What v/as his presence 
with our parents worth to our childhood ? 
Where and what would we as individuals have 
been to-day had we never found him ? What 
would our lives be to-day if Christ were taken 
out of them? What would this world be to 
us, what would life be to us, what would our 
future be, if we were suddenly and completely 
bereft of our Saviour, Christ ? What would 
existence be to us if thus bereft? It would 
be day bereft of the sun, and night disrobed 
of stars. To take Christ away from a believer 
is to take light and joy out of the heart and 
sweetness and peace out of the life. And yet 
this is the lot of uncounted millions of our 
race. We may say, it is true, that they are 
unconscious of their loss; but this does not 
change the facts as God reveals them to us, or 
lessen our responsibility in the slightest de- 
gree. 

It has been estimated that there are ten 
hundred million human beings in the world 
who, so far from knowing Christ as a per- 
sonal Saviour, have as yet never even heard 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 25 

his name. Ten hundred millions of human 
beings without Christ ! The very thought of 
such a multitude of souls groping in darkness 
is overwhelming; and yet the mind fails to 
grasp the full import of the words. It has 
been said that no millionaire ever comprehends 
the full extent of his wealth after it passes the 
million-dollar line. The figures express a certain 
numerical statement, but to the mind there is 
only an array of figures, an arithmetical ex- 
pression instead of a clear perception of dis- 
tributed values. We cannot take in at a 
glance this vast multitude of Christless men 
and women ; but we may possibly gain a 
clearer view of the almost endless throng by 
looking at them in detail. Let us, for instance, 
take up a position where all these millions can 
pass before us with military precision. Let 
them be formed in ranks with thirty abreast, and 
let them pass before us with rapid step, so that 
thirty shall pass every second. I take out my 
watch and note the ticking away of sixty 
seconds ; eighteen hundred persons have 
passed by. I watch the minute hand till sixty 
minutes are gone; one hundred and eight 
thousand more have passed. I stand at my 
post and watch the ceaseless tread of the 
passing thousands till the sun goes down, till 
midnight comes, till dawn and sunrise come 



26 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

again, and there is never a second's pause. 
Another day and another night go by ; the 
days lengthen into weeks ; the thousands have 
long since become millions ; but there is still 
no pause. Summer comes, with its sunny 
days, to find the long procession marching 
still. The flowers of summer give place to 
autumn's frosts, and a little later the snow of 
winter is flying in the air ; but morning, noon, 
and night we hear the awful tread of the passing 
multitude. Spring comes round again ; a 
year has passed, and yet not for one moment 
has that procession ever paused. ^' Will that 
awful footfall never cease?*' some one asks. 
We take a glance out to see how many yet 
remain, and find seventy-five millions patiently 
waiting their turn ! That is a faint attempt to 
grasp the meaning of our words when we speak 
of ten hundred million human beings. 

MERELY NOMINAL WORK AVILL NOT DO. 

We sometimes hear it said that the great 
commission to proclaim the Gospel to all 
nations has been almost completed, and good 
men and women may be seen even now gath- 
ering outside the closed gates of Thibet, eager 
to enter at the earliest possible moment and 
preach the Gospel to the last remaining nation 
which has not yet heard its joyful sound. God 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 2/ 

forbid that I should say a word to disparage 
either the spirit or the work of these earnest 
men and women, one of the most daring of 
whom is working under my own superintend- 
ence ; but as Christians we must not deceive 
ourselves. Thibet is by no means the only 
nation to which the Gospel has not been 
preached. A nation is not reached when one 
or more men preach in a given place, nor does 
the mere proclamation of a message of truth 
constitute the Gospel so long as Christ is not 
made known to the people. A nation is 
reached when the people of the nation are 
reached, and not when a certain territorial 
line is crossed. I have over and over again 
found villages within but a few miles of pros- 
perous mission stations in w^hich not a single 
person could be found who knew anything of 
Christ or had even heard his name. The 
prophets in old time were always most explicit 
in recording God's precious words of promise, 
and the preaching which they foretold had 
nothing of a perfunctory character about it. 
They looked forward to a time when all 
kingdoms, and nations, and peoples, and 
kindreds, and tribes, and languages should re- 
ceive God's word and serve the coming King; 
and we dare not limit promises so full of hope 
to the Church and the world. 



28 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

We should remember, too, that the word 
*' nation '' does not always mean a political 
division of the world. We may often find 
nations within nations. India is the oldest of 
modern mission fields, and yet its tribes and 
peoples and castes, among whom Christ is 
still unknown, are numbered by the hundred. 
It will not do to reckon India as simply one 
of the nations of the earth, and then calmly to 
assume that we have done our full measure of 
duty to her in that the Gospel is proclaimed 
in many places and in many tongues through- 
out her extended borders. Only a year ago I 
had my attention drawn to an extensive re- 
gion lying to the eastward of the Central Prov- 
inces, composed, for the most part, of a group 
of small native States, and said to be wholly 
destitute of missionary labor. After careful 
inquiry I asked three experienced missionaries 
to make a tour of exploration through that 
part of the country and report the result of 
their observations. They did their work care- 
fully and thoroughly, and in due time reported 
to me that they had found six millions of 
people to whom no messenger of the risen 
Saviour had ever gone. The whole region was 
as destitute of Christian privileges as it had 
been when Jesus gave the great commission 
to his apostles ; and among these neglected 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 29 

millions were petty kingdoms, different tribes, 
separate castes, and diverse tongues, all in- 
cluded in the old-time promises, and yet all 
destitute of the Gospel, which must be carried 
to the whole human race. A careful search in 
other lands would no doubt lead to similar dis- 
coveries. There can be no doubt that the sad 
fact confronts us that the evangelization of our 
world, so far from being nearly complete, has 
hardly passed its initial stage. The mighty 
task can be done, must be done, and done 
quickly; but we must not try to persuade our- 
selves that it is already nearly complete. 

BEARING CHRIST TO THE NATIONS. 

Having thus briefl}^ considered the unspeak- 
able loss of the earth*s teeming millions who 
are without Christ, let us try for a moment to 
obtain a clear view of our personal responsi- 
bility, or, perhaps it would be better to say, 
of our transcendent privilege, in being com- 
missioned to convey God*s great gift to these 
destitute nations. It is not that we are to 
send Bibles across the sea, or that we are to 
send a certain number of men to preach what 
is called '^ the Gospel," but rather that we are 
placed under a solemn obligation to carry 
Christ himself to those who know him not. 
When Jesus fed the multitude it would have 
3 



30 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

been as easy for him to have had the bread 
conveyed by invisible hands to the hungry 
people as it was to multiply the loaves ; but a 
lesson was to be taught to his disciples of all 
ages, the full significance of which should 
never be overlooked. The bread had to be 
distributed by human hands, and the incredu- 
lous disciples were taught, in a manner never 
to be forgotten, how the divine and the human 
are made to cooperate in feeding a famished 
world with the bread of life. The scene upon 
the grassy hillside was to be reenacted a 
million times as the ages passed by. Other 
multitudes were to be found, worn and weary 
and ready to perish, and other disciples were 
to go to their help with, not the bread that 
perisheth, but the living Son of God, the ever- 
blessed One typified by the ancient manna. 

Some of you still remember how, in the sad 
days of our civil war, we used to sing Mrs. 
Howe's '' Battle Hymn of the Republic." As 
the hymn was printed and reprinted all over 
the country it so happened that one word be- 
came involved in doubt, and thus, while some 
were singing, 

** In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea," 

others would say, 

'* In the beauty of the lilies Christ was dome across the sea." 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 3 1 

In a song so highly poetical it is possible to 
admit either word ; but, whatever the true 
rendering of the words may have been, we are 
able in our missionary era, not only in poetic 
phrase, but in sober prose as well, to conceive 
of our Saviour being borne on many a bark to 
distant climes as the companion of devoted 
messengers who go forth in his name. Every 
ship which carries a band of missionaries con- 
tains an invisible pillow for the head of the 
unseen Master. The timid maiden who leaves 
her village home in obedience to the Spirit's 
prompting, and goes forth to teach a few of 
the world's forsaken outcasts how to find and 
serve their heavenly Father, bears with her in 
holy com.panionship the Saviour of men, the 
King of all nations, and the Sovereign of all 
realms. This, and nothing less than this, is 
what every true missionary is called upon to 
do, and this is what scores upon scores are 
actually doing to-day. 

As we think of the character which the mis- 
sionary's work thus assumes w^e cease to think 
of duty; we almost forget the word and be- 
come absorbed in the thought of the transcend- 
ent privilege which is thus set before us. As 
we would take a physician to the sick or dying, 
a guide to the belated and wandering, a com- 
forter to the sorrowing, a teacher to the igno- 



32 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

rant, a friend to the friendless, or a helper to 
the helpless, so are we commissioned as Chris- 
tians to go out to every needy tribe and 
nation, taking with us One who is able and 
infinitely willing to receive every member of 
the human race and supply every form of 
human need. We cannot all go, it is true, but 
every missionary who goes abroad does so in 
the name of those who send him, and we all 
alike are thus permitted to bear a part in the 
most glorious work which God has ever put 
within the reach of human beings. Perhaps 
nothing in all God's plans for the human race 
is more mysterious than the fact that this un- 
speakable power, this hallowed privilege, has 
been intrusted to mortals. Angels celebrated 
the advent of Jesus to earth, angels ministered 
to him when among men, angels proclaimed 
his resurrection, and angels hover around 
every scene of his active work in our world 
still ; but not to angels, but to men, is it given 
to introduce him to the sinning, suffering, and 
sorrowing children of humanity, and thus 
achieve the highest possible ministry in which 
men or angels can engage in a world like ours. 

OUR PRIVILEGE SLIGHTED. 

With such a ministry set before us, a minis- 
try which angels might covet, with the doors 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 33 

of nearly all nations thrown wide open to in- 
vite our entry, with the Spirit, the word, and 
the providence of God alike urging us forward, 
it would be but reasonable to expect to see a 
great missionary movement going forward in 
all Christian lands. There surely ought to be 
no room for doubt or hesitation here. From 
the doors of every Christian nation the glad 
messengers of Christ ought to be seen hasten- 
ing forth, bearing in their earthen vessels the 
precious treasure of the divine presence. But 
when we look around us what do we see ? 
Almost every possible form of Christian work 
is put forward as a substitute for that which 
takes precedence of all other obligations. One 
stands forth to plead for the city *^ slums" 
(pardon me for using the word, but it has be- 
come current, and has no present equivalent), 
another advocates the claims of our foreign 
immigrants, a third tells of want and suffering 
on the frontier, a fourth represents the wants 
of the illiterate colored population, while a 
dozen of other voices are heard in behalf of as 
many other blessed enterprises, all good and 
deserving in their way and in their proper 
place ; but no one of them, nor all of them put 
together, can take precedence of the one 
great work which our risen and ascended Lord 
intrusted to his disciples, the supreme and 



^4 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

paramount duty, binding upon all Christians 
in all ages, to make him known to those who 
have no knowledge of him. Christianity is 
utterly inconsistent with its own claims so 
long as it fails to comprehend the urgency of 
its own mission on earth or pauses in its on- 
ward march to complete details which are hin- 
dered rather than helped by the mistaken 
policy which their promoters adopt. 

It often makes me feel sad and almost faint 
of heart when I hear intelligent and devoted 
Christians calmly excuse themselves from any 
obligation to support the efforts of the Church 
to evangelize the heathen v/orld. *^ I think," 
says one, ** that I can do more good in this, 
that, or the other way. I am not very sure 
about foreign missions. I think my duty lies 
nearer home.'' Now, substitute for the term 
*' foreign missions '' Jesus Christ, and see how 
it will sound. Try to realize, even for a mo- 
ment, what it is to assume that great nations, 
that hundreds of millions of our fellow-men, 
can be left century after century without 
Christ, without a knowledge of God, without 
a hope of immortality, while we are making 
desultory efforts to perfect the work which 
our Saviour in his infinite mercy began in our 
own land in the days of our fathers — try, I say, 
to realize what this really means, and soon it 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 35 

will begin to seem as if a veiled spirit of daring 
atheism were invading the Church of Christ. 
No form of unbelief or error is so pernicious 
as that which is elaborately illustrated in the 
practical life of Christian men and women. Bet- 
ter teach and preach the doctrine of a limited 
atonement than limit the effects of Christ's 
universal atonement by our deliberate refusal 
to make him know^n to those for whom he 
died. Better deny the mission of Christ to 
earth than resolutely to adopt and defend a 
policy w^hich must, for many long centuries, 
shut off two thirds of the race from even a 
knowledge of his name. It cannot be said too 
often or too emphatically that as Christians we 
have little to fear from men of Mr. IngersolFs 
class. Such men do harm, no doubt ; but they 
avow their purpose, they w^ork openly, and 
they use no concealed weapons. It is better 
to deny Christ in express terms than solemnly 
to avow our belief in him and yet practically 
deny him by discrediting his work, limiting his 
mission, putting territorial limits to his love, 
and deliberately and persistently ignoring the 
terms of his farewell commandment to his 
apostles, and through them to his disciples of 
all ages. 

Let no one misunderstand me and suppose 
that I depreciate Christian work in its many 



36 THE CHRIStLESS NATIONS. 

forms in our own and other Christian lands. 
God forbid that I should for one moment fall 
into the fatal error of thinking that one good 
cause can be built up by pulling down another. 
The work of God on earth assumes a thousand 
forms, and yet it is one work. To injure it 
at one point is to injure it at every point ; and 
it is for this reason we need to give the more 
earnest heed to God's missionary call upon his 
people in all parts of the world. This call is 
in universal terms, it requires immediate obe- 
dience, it concerns the universal Church of 
God, and it cannot be disobeyed without caus- 
ing serious injury to all forms of Christian 
work to-day. The surest and the best way to 
promote all forms of Christian work in Chris- 
tian lands is to give effect to the great com- 
mission which takes precedence of every other 
obligation. The best way to help the work at 
home is to obey God by making Christ known 
to the nations which sit in darkness. In plead- 
ing for the Christless nations I am really plead- 
ing for this city, for this State, for all the 
States of the Union. 

WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN NATION? • 

It will be said, no doubt, as it often i^ said, 
that our country is by no means Christianized 
as yet, and that we are in reality obe}nng our 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 37 

Saviour's commission so long as we are en- 
gaged in bringing those who know him not to 
a personal knowledge of him. This raises the 
very practical question, What is a Christian 
nation ? We have seen what is meant by a 
Christless nation, that is, one in which our 
Saviour is wholly unknown ; but it is not so 
easy to define in exact terms what it is which 
entitles a nation to call itself Christian. Time 
will not admit of a full discussion of this ques- 
tion ; but a few points of contrast will at least 
enable us to appreciate our advantages. Every 
man and woman in England and America who 
wishes to be guided to the world's Saviour can 
find a willing guide within a few minutes, or, at 
most, a few hours. Living Christians are met 
everywhere, and those who are willing and 
anxious to be led can always find some one 
who will be glad to lead them to the Saviour, 
as Philip led Nathanael. It is very different 
in non-Christian lands. Millions upon millions 
might ask for such a guide in vain. At the 
very worst here and there an individual may 
grope in darkness on our side of the globe, 
but on the other side we see the sad and 
startling spectacle of groping nations. 

A few years ago a question was raised among 
certain missionaries in India concerning the 
boundaries of their respective mission fields. 



38 THE CHRlSTLESS NATIONS. 

It had been tacitly assumed that when a given 
field was occupied by one party of workers 
others should refrain from entering it ; but in 
some cases misunderstandings occurred, and it 
became necessary to define the word ** occupy/* 
Some contended that if one or more mission- 
aries established a station in a district contain- 
ing a million inhabitants they occupied that 
field and should be left to evangelize the peo- 
ple in their own time and way ; but others 
took a very different view and insisted that no 
occupancy should be respected unless a practi- 
cal effort was made to plant out-stations at 
suitable points. In the course of the discus- 
sion which followed the most liberal proposal 
that was made v/as that a field should be con- 
sidered open so long as provision was not 
made for placing at least one Christian within 
ten miles of every home in the district ; or, in 
other words, the Christian workers should be 
so distributed among the people that no one 
need go more than ten miles from his home in 
order to find one. This proposal, however, 
did not meet with favor, chiefly for the reason 
that it seemed impossible to make such a pro- 
vision for any known mission field. It seemed 
too much to hope that helpers and guides 
could be placed within reach of the people 
even if they were disposed to seek them. 



THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 39 

But, unfortunately, they are not so disposed. 
The order of the Gospel is that we must go to 
the lost and perishing, not that we should 
wait for them to come to us. In times of 
famine hundreds of thousands of the poor peo- 
ple in India remain in their village homes and 
die of hunger, while camps for the free distri- 
bution of food are established within ten miles 
of them. Hunger and physical weakness seem 
to render them incapable of effort and indiffer- 
ent to their fate, while in the case of many a 
journey of ten miles from home seems like 
setting out for a distant and utterly unknown 
country. If it is so hard to induce those who 
are ready to die to go away from home to ob- 
tain bread, what possible use is there in expect- 
ing those who are perishing for w^ant of the 
bread of life to go ten miles from home to 
inquire concerning it ? Now and then we 
meet with such cases, and as time passes they 
may become more frequent, but at best they 
wdll be exceptional. America and England 
are but imperfectly Christianized, it is true, 
but they have all the elements within them 
w^iich are needed to complete the w^ork, and in 
at least a relative sense they are now Christian 
nations ; but in contrast with them the con- 
dition of the most favored of non-Christian 
lands is such as should move the deepest sym- 



40 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 

pathies of everyone who bears the image of 
Jesus Christ upon his heart. Now, as in the 
days of our Lord's ministry, it is enough for 
the disciple that he be as his Master, for the 
servant that he be as his Lord. The love of 
Jesus Christ for the human race is world-em- 
bracing; let ours be the same. Let us main- 
tain the same attitude toward this momentous 
question that he maintains, and the unbelieving 
world will quickly begin to realize that Chris- 
tianity is consistent with itself, and that Chris- 
tians no longer dishonor the sacred name which 
they bear by refusing or neglecting to make it 
possible for all nations to crown him as both 
their Saviour and their King. 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

THE present time is opportune for a careful 
and candid discussion of the practical 
value of the great missionary movement. The 
second century of modern missions has recently 
opened, the sphere of missionary work has 
been immensely enlarged, young men and 
women are enlisting for service abroad in con- 
stantly increasing numbers, and the friends of 
the cause are becoming m.ore and more impor- 
tunate in their demands upon the public for 
pecuniary support. Under such circumstances 
it is certainly reasonable that Ave should be 
asked to show that money given for this cause 
is not spent for naught ; that young men and 
women who go to the foreign field do not, or 
at least need not, toil in vain ; and that suc- 
cess, in the highest and noblest sense of the 
word, may be achieved as certainly, and in as 
large measure, in the mission field as anywhere 
else in the wide domain of Christian effort. 
The missionary enterprise occupies very high 
ground, and after a century of heroic effort it 
certainly ought to be well able to show by ac- 
complished results not only that it has achieved 



44 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

success in the past, but that it enters upon its 
second century with greater possibilities within 
its reach than were dreamed of a century ago. 

CAREFUL INQUIRY NEEDED. 

A statement of the missionary possibilities 
which God is now setting before the Church is 
the more needed in view of the doubts which 
not a few avowed friends of Christianity 
have in recent years expressed with reference 
to the ultimate success of the enterprise. 
Canon Taylor, of England, may be taken as a 
fair spokesman of this class, and it must be 
admitted that he has many followers. His 
arithmetic is faulty, no doubt ; and yet, when 
he compares the results thus far achieved with 
the gigantic task which has been taken in 
hand, it must be confessed that he makes out 
a strong case, and there is too much reason to 
fear that his presentation of the question has 
created serious misgiving in the minds of many 
sincere Christians. While admitting that some 
good is done, that a few idols are thrown away 
and a few heathen brought to Christ, thousands 
and hundreds of thousands of intelligent 
Christians are unable to see any promise of 
ultimate success in a work of such magnitude. 
Others, again, with hazy notions of Christianity 
and without any sympathy for the idea of a 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 45 

common faith for our common humanity, re- 
gard the missionary enterprise as chimerical, 
if not worse, and do not dream of its ever 
making an impression of any importance on 
the world. Another class of doubters may be 
found among the supporters of missions them- 
selves. Many who believe in the duty of 
sending missionaries to the non-Christian na- 
tions have yet but little hope or expectation 
of success in the work. They practically be- 
lieve that while in this work all things are pos- 
sible not many things are probable. They do 
not expect success, and some even think it 
wrong to look for it. '^ I have nothing to do 
with results," is practically the motto of thou- 
sands who find in these mistaken words a ready 
excuse for their want of success. The Chris- 
tian worker has very much to do with the pos- 
sible results of his labor, and in the great mis- 
sionary field it is most important that the 
highest possibilities should be clearly set be- 
fore him and kept constantly in view. 

If it should seem to anyone that this is 
Ignoring the rule of faith, or putting sight in 
the place which faith should occupy, I need 
only reply that faith should not ignore the 
ordinary laws of human intelligence. Unbelief 
is blind and works in the dark; but faith has a 
clear vision and loves the light. It is not the 
4 



46 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

work of faith to select a barren field, or to 
work in a wrong way, or to persist in a fruitless 
task, or to ignore the lessons of the past, or to 
refuse to see the tokens of the present. It 
would not have been an evidence of faith, for 
instance, if the disciples had refused to cast in 
the net on the right side of the ship, and had 
persisted in fishing at the spot where they had 
spent a long night of fruitless toil instead of 
obeying their Master and thereby making suc- 
cess assured. 

The Church of Christ, standing as she does 
near the threshold of the twentieth century, 
needs the encouragement which an intelligent 
survey of her opportunities and possibilities 
cannot fail to give her. Faith is said to laugh 
at impossibilities, but this is only when seeing 
the promise of God. If we would stimulate 
the faith of the Christian world to-day, and 
thus prepare the way for a great advance 
throughout the world ; if, in short, Vv^e would 
make the tv/entieth century the missionary 
century of the world's history, we should keep 
constantly in view the Saviour's great commis- 
sion to make him known to all the nations, and 
also constantly call attention to the tokens of 
his presence in the world's great missionary 
fields of the present day. There certainly 
seems to be grave reason to fear that many of 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 47 

the best friends of missions, including not a 
few leaders, are too easily satisfied with any 
measure of success, so long as it falls short of 
actual failure. For instance, one of the latest 
estimates of the results of the past century of 
missionary labor places the total number of 
communicants at 900,000, and adds the expres- 
sion of a hope that the increase will ere long 
reach 50,000 a year. Taken by itself, this 
looks like success ; but when we think of all 
Christendom being represented in this effort 
the result appears extremely meager, and it is 
not strange that many who are familiar with the 
glowing promises of God feel almost disheart- 
ened by such an outlook. But no one need 
feel disheartened. The results are better than 
they seem, while the possibilities of achieving 
greater results are within easy reach. 

THE HOME SITUATION. 

In taking a survey of these possibilities it 
may be best to begin at home. The initial 
step in the great undertaking is that of select- 
ing and sending forth messengers of Christ to 
nations and peoples who do not know him ; and 
it is just here that the enterprise often seems 
the weakest. The volunteers for service are 
increasing, but a large majority of those who 
offer are, for various reasons, found disqualified. 



48 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

The contributions of the Churches are at best 
extremely moderate, and bear no proportion 
to the gigantic work which has been taken in 
hand. The cost of the work does not diminish 
with success, but, on the other hand, increases 
materially, and to many careful observers it 
begins to appear as if a deadlock had been 
reached and further progress rendered impos- 
sible. As a matter of fact, most of the great 
missionary societies of the world are able to do 
little more than hold their own, A majority 
of them are in debt, and but few signs of 
elasticity can be found in their finances. 
Under these circumstances it may seem un- 
timely to try to show that greater things 
should be attempted ; but it is for this very 
reason that I venture to begin at this point. 
If we consent to accept the present financial 
status of the leading societies as normal, if we 
abandon the hope of brighter days and of 
greatly enlarged resources, we may as well con- 
fess our failure and abandon all further thought 
of making Christ known to all the human race. 
But such a thought cannot be entertained for 
a single moment. So far from the resources 
of the Churches having been exhausted, they 
have hardly been touched. The methods em- 
ployed in the past may have been found insuf- 
ficient ; the policy pursued may have been 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 49 

unsound in some particulars; but the ability 
of the evangelical Churches not only to main- 
tain the work as it is, but to double it, or even 
to increase it tenfold, can hardly be questioned. 
In trying to form an estimate of the financial 
possibilities of the missionary situation as it is 
at the present day it is useless to take into 
consideration the mere ability of the present 
generation of Christians. If the question were 
one of ability only the problem would be 
solved in a second. The Christians of America 
alone are abundantly able to maintain enough 
missionary agencies of various kinds to com- 
plete the evangelization of the world before 
the close of the next century; but the practi- 
cal question before us is not one of ability 
merely, but of willingness to give and of the 
best means to adopt in gathering up the offer- 
ings of God's people. It has been demon- 
strated over and over again that a tax so light 
as to be almost nominal laid upon all the evan- 
gelical Christians in the United States would 
not only suffice to maintain all the missionary 
work now in existence, but increase it two, ten, 
or even twentyfold. It would be easy to se- 
lect ten professing Christians in the United 
States on whose productive property a tax of 
one per cent would yield enough revenue to 
double all the American missions in the world 



so MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

and carry them forward in a state of high effi- 
ciency. But statements of this kind, while 
very suggestive, do not practically help us in 
the present discussion. The missionary cause 
has never become debtor to any serious extent 
to men of colossal fortunes. It has from the 
first been chiefly dependent upon the masses, 
including the poor and persons of very moder- 
ate means, and it is to the masses that we 
must now turn. 

A STARTLING ILLUSTRATION. 

If we take the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
with which we chance to be most familiar, as 
an illustration, we find a people who profess to 
believe in the missionary enterprise, whose 
missionary enthusiasm is easily stirred, and yet 
whose average annual contributions for each 
member do not exceed fifty cents per year. 
Such a discovery is more than disheartening, 
it is positively alarming. When w^e remember 
that many give most liberally, and that at the 
public collections but few donors give so little 
as fifty cents, the inference is unavoidable that 
the majority give absolutely nothing. It may 
be said, no doubt, that in many families there 
is only one purse-holder ; but this ought not 
seriously to affect the average. What, then, is 
wrong? Where is the blame to be placed? 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 51 

And when the actual is so humiHating what 
can be said for the possible ? 

For one, I cannot for a moment believe that 
there is no relief to the present strain. I have 
mingled with our people from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, and have never found a congrega- 
tion indifferent to the missionary enterprise. 
No other appeal so readily kindles the en- 
thusiasm of the people, and no other meets 
with a more liberal response in the shape of 
freewill offerings. Perhaps more prayers as- 
cend for the missionaries than for any other 
body of Christians in the world. The people 
are not indifferent. They are abundantly able 
to give twice as much as is now given, and a 
proposal to double the missionary working 
force of the Church would meet with an enthu- 
siastic response. But enthusiasm alone can do 
very little. It can neither devise nor execute. 
It may even become a source of weakness if 
depended on too implicitly. Fifty years ago 
the plan was adopted by our missionary lead- 
ers of putting forth special efforts on a special 
occasion, once a year, in each leading church, 
and this plan is followed to the present day. 
Some of the meetings are very notable, and 
sometimes the collections are princely, but in 
the long run this policy must fail. It has all 
the defects of spasmodic effort ; it often creates 



52 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

a hurtful reaction ; it accustoms the people to 
the notion that they cannot do their duty 
unless acting under the spur of a special stimu- 
lus ; and it fosters the idea that the missionary 
cause is dependent on the leading churches 
and the more wealthy classes. The right 
policy, the only policy which can permanently 
succeed, must be one that enlists all the people 
in support of the cause. 

A PRACTICABLE PLAN, 

For the sake of continuing an illustration 
with which we chance to be familiar, let us 
look further at the present missionary situation 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
membership, including probationers, amounts 
to 2,680,000, but for the sake of easy computa- 
tion let us put it at 2,500,000. Next let 
one half of these be deducted as nongivers, 
such as the very poor, young children, and 
those members of families in which the bad 
practice prevails of having one member give 
for all. We have still left a mighty army, 
1,250,000 strong. Let us now divide these 
persons into eight classes, arranged as follows : 
First, let us set apart 500,000 who can give, at 
the least, a nickel every month. The aggre- 
gate gift of this class will be $300,000. Next, 
let us take 500,000 more who may be expected 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 53 

to give ten cents each every month, and we 
are surprised to find their aggregate contribu- 
tion footing up no less than $600,000. In the 
third class let us include those who can easily 
and freely give twenty-five cents a month, or 
three dollars a year, and let us include in this 
class 1 50,000 persons. Their aggregate ofiering 
will amount to $450,000. In the fourth class let 
us put 75,000 persons, and estimate their contri- 
butions at fifty cents a month, or six dollars a 
year. The total amounts to $450,000. In the 
fifth class we put only 15,000 persons, and 
assign them one dollar a month, or a total of 
$180,000. The next class is a very small one, 
only 5,000 persons, giving two dollars and fifty 
cents each, but making an aggregate of 
$150,000. The remaining 5,000 are divided 
into two classes of 2,500 each, giving respect- 
ively five and ten dollars each, and making an 
aggregate of $450,000. We have thus the fol- 
lowing result : 

500,000 at $0.05 each monthly $300,000 

500,000 at .10 each monthly 600,000 

150,000 at .25 each monthly 450,000 

75,000 at .50 each monthly 450,000 

15,000 at i.oo each monthly 180,000 

5,000 at 2.50 each monthly 150,000 

2,500 at 5.00 each monthly 150,000 

2,500 at 10.00 each monthly 300,000 

1,250,000 $2,580,000 



54 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

These estimates are extremely low, and are 
only made after one half of the entire member- 
ship has been set aside as nongivers; but it 
becomes evident at a glance that if such a scale 
of giving could be adopted it would double 
the missionary income of the Church at a 
stroke, and open the eyes of the Christian 
world to possibilities of vvdiich very few per- 
sons have ever dreamed. But can such an 
estimate ever be realized ? Has it any prac- 
tical value? Is there any reasonable prospect, 
for instance, that the small sum of five cents a 
month can ever be collected from a vast multi- 
tude of five hundred thousand persons scat- 
tered all over the country ? 

This exact plan may not be found the best 
in all its details, but I am persuaded that we 
shall never see a healthy state of missionary 
finance until a determined and persistent effort 
is made to enlist the masses of the people in 
support of the cause, and to collect their offer- 
ings. It is a well-known maxim that taxes 
will not collect themselves, and the same is 
true of benevolent contributions. The average 
donor will not take the trouble to walk round 
the corner with his offering, but will pay it 
cheerfully enough if called upon at home. 
Just at this point we discover the great need 
of the hour. It is not givers so much as col- 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 55 

lectors, men and women, and boys and girls, 
who will undertake the simple task of gather- 
ing up once a month the stated offerings of a 
given number of donors. In every church let 
such a staff of collectors be selected, and not 
only organized but drilled for the service, and 
the work will be done. The present plan of 
assigning the duty to overworked or possibly 
indifferent pastors, or to perfunctory commit- 
tees appointed with the tacit understanding 
that no work shall be exacted from them, can 
never prove successful. It has been found a 
mistake to try to lay this responsibility upon 
the pastors as a merely incidental part of their 
many duties. The whole machinery should 
be constructed anew and the responsibility 
placed in the hands of persons who believe in 
the missionary enterprise and who feel person- 
ally called to support it. All this may require 
a little time, but three or four years ought to 
suffice to accomplish it. 

DEMAND FOR WORKERS. 

In the next place, let us consider the demand 
for additional workers. It can no longer be 
said, at least in an absolute sense, that the 
laborers are few ; but comparatively they are 
still very few indeed. In the early days of the 
missionary movement it was thought necessary 



56 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

to send out a man and wife for almost every 
non-Christian neighborhood ; but that policy 
has been in a large measure given up, and now, 
in most of our great fields, the missionaries 
would be more than thankful if they could get 
one foreign missionary for each half million of 
the people. But to muster even this slender 
force would require a very large reinforcement 
from the home field, so large, indeed, that to 
many it will seem almost useless to discuss the 
question. But if the means can be found for a 
great forward movement in the foreign field it 
is certain that men and women can be found 
for every vacant place. They may not be 
found in a day, or, if found, may not be pre- 
pared to go abroad on a day's notice ; but they 
can be enlisted and placed under drill, and can 
be sent to the front when fully prepared. The 
difficulty which has usually been experienced 
in finding young missionaries has been chiefly 
owing to the haphazard policy which has been 
pursued of picking up young men at short 
notice and hurrying them to the front without 
sufficient preparation. A systematic enlist- 
ment of young men and women, with a course 
of training suited to the wants of each candi- 
date, would not only provide all the workers 
needed, but would greatly reduce the proba- 
bilities of failure after reaching the field. 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 57 

THE world's gates OPENING. 

Turning now to the foreign field, we reach 
the point of chief interest in the minds of most 
persons who are studying the question of mis- 
sionary possibihtics. First of all, let me call 
your attention to the remarkable manner in 
which obstacles have been removed out of the 
way during recent years. Comparatively few 
persons seem to be aware that, until very recent 
years, by far the greater part of the world was 
inaccessible to the Christian missionary. A 
century and a half ago there was not a spot on 
the great continent of Asia on which a Protes- 
tant Christian could set his foot without the 
consent of rulers nearly every one of whom was 
hostile to missionary effort in every form. 
Fifty years ago two thirds of Europe was closed 
against the evangelical missionary, while vast 
portions of the world were so little known that 
no attempt had ever been made to penetrate 
their depths in search of any possible people 
who might be ready for the missionary. But 
during the present generation the doors of the 
nations have been opening to us in a wonderful 
way. During the comparatively short period 
which has elapsed since I became a missionary 
obstacles of various kinds have been taken out 
of the way, until now I can look abroad and see 



58 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

a way of easy access to seven hundred millions 
of the human race, all of whom would have 
been beyond my reach had I desired to go to 
them in the days of my youth. And this proc- 
ess is still going on. High walls are falling 
into ruins at the quiet approach of Christ's 
messengers ; remote regions are coming nearer; 
hostile people are becoming friendly ; prej udices 
are melting away, and thus the opportunities 
set before us make it possible to accomplish 
things which would have been considered 
wholly impossible even as late as the middle 
of the present century. 

A still more important advantage is found in 
the more ready access which the missionary 
has gained to the hearts and minds of the 
people. For many years after southern and 
eastern Asia had been thrown open to the 
missionary the people seemed strangely inac- 
cessible. In China able men toiled for ten, 
fifteen, and in some cases twenty years with- 
out gathering any tangible fruit or seeing any 
tokens of future success. More than fifty years 
after William Carey had landed in India the 
Protestant converts were very few in number, 
and conversion to Christianity was dreaded by 
all classes quite as much as the leprosy. The 
missionary was among the people, and yet he 
seemed separated from them by an impassable 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 59 

gulf. There seemed to be no possibility of 
wide success under such conditions, and these 
conditions seemed to be beyond the possibihty 
of change. But to-day we see a whole world 
of new possibilities. Only a few years ago the 
favorite objection to Indian missions was that 
converts could not be made ; to-day the cry is 
that the converts are coming in such numbers 
that in the very nature of the case most of the 
alleged conversions must be spurious. In both 
India and China the missionary has v/on a 
position where he is in touch with multitudes 
of the people. He may not be in touch with 
all classes, but it can no longer be said that all 
classes, high and low alike, hold aloof from 
him in his character as a religious teacher. 
More men and w^omen in China can be reached 
and won in a single day than were formerly 
secured in a decade. More persons in India 
are asking for Christian teachers and preachers 
to-day than v/ere formerly brought into the 
Christian fold in half a century. Even in the 
depths of Africa the same religious phenomenon 
may be observed. Whole tribes and nations 
of what were rude savages a quarter of a cen- 
tury ago have been brought under Christian 
influences and are eagerly entering upon the 
pathway of Christian progress. These changes 
in the attitude of non-Christian peoples are so 



6o MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

many and so widely extended that they can 
neither be overlooked nor misunderstood. 
They indicate changed and changing con- 
ditions, and, as far as missionary possibilities 
are concerned, amount almost to a complete 
revolution. 

BETTER PLANS COMING INTO FAVOR. 

Another feature of the present outlook which 
is full of encouragement is seen in the charac- 
ter of the plans which many missionaries are 
learning to adopt. In spiritual warfare, as in 
the strife of armies, very much depends on the 
plan of campaign which is adopted. If no 
plan is formed, if no systematic method is 
pursued, if the efforts put forth are desultory 
and disconnected, and if the field of operations 
is contracted almost to the verge of absolute 
insignificance, no great result can be expected, 
and success on a wide scale cannot be hoped 
for. In the past very much of the missionary 
work of the world has been weak in this re- 
spect. A band of missionaries settle down at 
some point and begin to work on a very con- 
tracted scale, hoping at the very utmost to win a 
few hundred converts, organize a few churches, 
as nearly as possible on the home model, and 
thank God for whatever measure of success 
they meet. They plan for little, expect little 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 6 1 

and receive little. Such men are often the 
best of good men ; but it is not by such plans 
that kingdoms are to be subdued and empires 
founded. The task to be accomplished is one 
of gigantic proportions, and plans should be 
formed for a campaign worthy of the enterprise 
in hand. This fact is beginning to be realized. 
In various parts of the world the spectacle can 
be witnessed of missionary organizations which 
extend their operations over a nation, a king- 
dom, or an empire. These organizations may 
be only in outline now, but provision is made 
for filling in all vacant places as the years go 
by, and thus extending the line until every 
non-Christian agency is confronted by an ac- 
tive Christian force, working with all the ad- 
vantages which careful organization, experi- 
enced leadership, and quenchless zeal can give. 
Take India, for example, with its nearly three 
hundred million people. It seems at first 
glance a hopeless task to attempt the conver- 
sion of such a multitude ; but when we meet 
Christian young men and women who expect 
to live till they form part of a militant host of 
a hundred thousand Christian soldiers all en- 
listed in India, and all eagerly pressing for- 
ward with the instinct of victory in their 
hearts to achieve the spiritual conquest of an 
empire, their enterprise ceases to seem imprac- 



62 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

ticable, and their campaign at once attracts 
attention as one of the grandest attempts ever 
made by a Christian people to overthrow evil 
and establish good. 

The mention of one hundred thousand pos- 
sible Christian workers, enlisted, organized, 
and engaged in actual service in India or 
China, calls our attention to the fact that 
God is teaching the present generation of 
Christians some important lessons in regard to 
work and workers in the Master's vineyard. 
The Church is rapidly outgrowing the old-time 
notion that a fev/ men constituting an order 
called '* the ministry "hold a virtual monopoly 
in the Christian labor market. One of the 
most striking developments of the present day 
is the extraordinary manner in which men and 
women of all ages and all ranks are coming for- 
ward to take up Christian work in various 
forms, both old and new. In this respect most 
mission fields are in advance of the home fields. 
Women are frequently em.ployed, and in large 
numbers. Men of half a dozen different 
grades are sent out to preach, and scores of 
unclassified men, some of them but recent 
converts who cannot read a line, are success- 
fully at work persuading their kinsmen and 
neighbors to abandon dumb idols and turn to 
the living God. If we attempt to limit the 



MISSIONARY rOSSIBILITIES. 63 

work in India or China by the conventional 
notions which prevail in America it may, no 
doubt, be very long indeed before the spectacle 
of one hundred thousand workers is w^itnessed 
in India; but neither in India nor America is 
the old notion going to prevail. The Teacher 
who deUvered the great sermon at Jacob's 
well saw not only the Samaritans of Sychar 
around him, but no doubt looked down the 
ages and saw the times in which we live ; and 
to us as well as to his first disciples was the 
exhortation addressed to pray the Lord of the 
harvest to send forth laborers into the whiten- 
ing harvest fields. The prayers of millions are 
ascending, and God is answering by raising up 
men and w^omen for the mighty task set before 
his people. Only three months ago one of our 
Annual Conferences in India resolved to put 
one hundred and fifty young men into school, 
with a view to training them for their work as 
Christian w^orkers. Their course of study will 
extend over only two years, but this will suf- 
fice for the kind of work which they will be 
expected to do. There seems to be no diffi- 
culty in finding the men, and the wives of 
many of them will study with their husbands. 
Here in the United States you can hardly re- 
alize what this means. You can hardly con- 
ceive, for instance, what it would mean if an 



64 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

Annual Conference in the State of New York 
were to determine to select one hundred and 
fifty young men and set them apart for a 
course of theological study extending over two 
years, with the expectation of having the men 
collected and the work in actual progress 
within two or three months. But in the great 
mission fields of the world the conditions are 
such that urgency becomes imperative. If the 
millions are to be reached workers must liter- 
ally be thrust out among them. If not highly 
educated they will yet be far in advance of 
those to whom they go. They cannot learn 
very much in two years, but the most of them 
can lay the foundation of an education which 
will command respect in village communities 
and fit them for lives of usefulness in their 
Master's service. 

POWER OF A CHRISTIAN MINORITY. 

But the thought will probably occur to you 
that, after all, one hundred thousand men and 
women, even if gifted and devoted in the 
highest sense, will be almost lost to the sight 
among the millions of such a country as India, 
and thus the problem of ultimate success will 
remain almost as far from solution as ever. I 
trust, however, that no one will make so great 
4 mistake as to forget that one true Christian 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 6$ 

Counts for as much as a hundred persons of 
any other faith. A tiny Httle lamp is more 
than a match for a large room full of darkness. 
The Christians in nearly all communities are 
in a minority, and yet in most matters they 
give tone and character to the whole commu- 
nity. Add to this the consideration that in 
the problem before us the Christian workers 
are organized and possess all the advantages 
which organization gives, and it will be seen 
that the ultimate conversion of India is by no 
means so improbable or so remote an event as 
it is usually assumed to be. 

The wholly unexpected and extraordinary 
result of the war between Japan and China 
affords a very instructive illustration at this 
point. China was in almost every respect the 
stronger of the two combatants at the outset. 
Her vast population, her great armies, her ex- 
haustless resources, and the prestige which her 
position as the leading Asiatic power gave her, 
all combined to make the world believe that 
Japan was entering upon a conflict in which 
success was impossible ; but events have dem- 
onstrated that success was not only possible but 
comparatively easy. How are we to account for 
the success of Japan and the failure of China? 
The Japanese were united, had a single pur- 
pose in view, and above all were organized for 



66 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

victory. The Chinese, on the other hand, 
had a very imperfect organization, had no 
definite purpose, and, as a people, practically 
took no part in the struggle. Under such 
conditions thirty-five million Japanese were 
equal to four hundred million Chinese. In the 
impending struggle between Christianity and 
the non-Christian faiths in India, and to some 
extent in all non-Christian lands, very similar 
conditions prevail, and similar results may be 
anticipated. A small Christian force may 
always be estimated as fully equal to a very 
large non-Christian body, especially if the 
former is truly Christian. I have sometimes 
even ventured to express the opinion that 
when the Christians of India amount to 
a total community of ten millions they will 
exert more influence and wield more power 
than the v/hole non-Christian mass of the 
population. 

ESTIMATING RESULTS. 

Many good Christians doubt the wisdom of 
all attempts to estimate the results of Christian 
labor. They are willing to sow and plant in 
springtime and to estimate the amiount to be 
gathered in harvest ; but in the spiritual world 
they shrink from the very thought of calmly 
sitting down to calculate results in this way. 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 6/ 

To some it seems too mechanical, to others 
irreverent, while to others it probably appears 
as too uncertain to be clepended on. And yet 
God encourages us to expect success, and has 
given us a whole galaxy of promises to 
strengthen us while we toil. Of all living men 
the missionary ought to feel most assured of 
success. He may be mistaken as to details, 
but his commission is given by One who shall 
never fail nor be discouraged till judgment is 
set in the earth ; and this One is his daily com- 
panion and his victorious leader evermore. 
Night may cease to distill its dews, but the rich 
dews of heavenly grace will never cease to re- 
fresh the spirit of the Christian toiler or fail to 
water the precious seed which he scatters in 
human hearts. The wind may cease to blow 
where it listeth, but the Spirit of God will 
never cease to attend the steps of the humblest 
disciple who goes forth as a messenger of Jesus 
Christ. Storm and tempest, hail and frost, 
blight and mildew may defeat the plans and 
mar the hopes of other toilers ; but all things 
in God's universe, from the starry systems 
above us to the minute events of our daily lives, 
move together in harmony with the best possi- 
ble interests of every work which we carry on 
in the name of Jesus Christ. With these facts 
before us, why should we shrink from the 



68 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

thought of using our confidence as a basis for 
action? Why should we hesitate to make use 
of all the elements of certainty which enter into 
the prosecution of such a work as that which 
the missionary prosecutes? 

Many years ago a friend in a city in upper 
India submitted for my inspection a plan for 
the erection of a large manufacturing establish- 
ment. All the details had been carefully elabo- 
rated, and the probable results of the enter- 
prise were boldly tabulated. In due time a 
company was formed, capital invested, build- 
ings erected, and work commenced ; and for 
more than twenty years the plans elaborated 
on paper have been successfully illustrated in 
action. We are not surprised at this, and no 
one dreams that the first promoter of the en- 
terprise did an unwise thing in planning for the 
future. About the same time a Christian 
worker went to another city in India to lay the 
foundations of a great Christian enterprise. 
His working capital consisted almost wholly in 
the promises of God. He confidently expected 
success, and began his work as if it were 
already assured. His enterprise also proved 
successful, and goes on apace, gaining con- 
stant headway, to the present day. These two 
men worked on similar principles, one in the 
commercial world and the other in the spir- 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 69 

itual. Did the Christian commit an error in 
assuming that one of the children of Hght 
might venture to be as wise in his generation 
as the children of this world ? 

OUR OPPORTUNITIES. 

If now we turn to the great missionary- 
world, look at our possibilities, and form plans 
accordingly, we can hardly fail to be impressed 
with the conviction that no men and women 
since Pentecost have ever enjoyed such oppor- 
tunities as those which God is setting before 
his people. Practically there is no limit to the 
vast field which presents itself to our vision. 
If we ask for a region in which people may be 
found who ask for instruction, not in a general 
sense, but definitely, for the purpose of becom- 
ing Christians, we may find a score of such dis- 
tricts in India, a number in China, and other 
equally hopeful people in the interior of Africa. 
If the workers could be found ready to receive 
them one hundred thousand candidates for 
baptism could be enrolled in India alone before 
the close of the present year. Intelligent ob- 
servers in China assure me that the outlook in 
some parts of that empire is rapidly becoming 
almost equally hopeful. Let it be conceded that 
these people are very ignorant, very poor, and 
very weak in moral character ; but the fact 



70 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

remains that they are inquiring the way to 
Christianity, and that thousands of other poor 
creatures of Hke character have become genuine 
Christians. The one conspicuous fact which 
confronts us is that tens of thousands of peo- 
ple whom we call heathen wish to become 
Christians, and are willing and ready to receive 
instruction at the hands of the Christian mis- 
sionary. Putting aside all other more distant 
possibilities, and considering only those regions 
where willing thousands await our coming, I do 
not hesitate to say that a forward movement 
on the part of all the evangelical Churches of 
Christendom might very easily be made to 
yield one hundred thousand adult converts 
every year, or, in other words, might be made 
to produce as much fruit in nine years as all 
the missions of the world have done in the 
past century. 

But the possibilities of the situation do not 
stop here ; they only begin to unfold them- 
selves to our view. All experience has taught 
us that an ingathering of converts may be ex- 
pected to prepare the way for a still larger 
number of inquirers. The presence of one 
hundred thousand converts to-day means the 
appearance of two hundred thousand inquirers 
in the near future ; and in this way we may 
confidently assume that before many years the 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 7 1 

great mission fields of the world will present 
the spectacle of millions of men and women 
waiting to be received and guided into the way 
of life. The millions are coming as surely as 
harvest follows springtime, and w^e must pre- 
pare for their coming. Let no one be startled 
at the thought or tempted to fear that I am 
yielding to a flight of fancy or led away by an 
extravagant enthusiasm. This world is to be- 
come a Cliristian world ; the powers of hell 
are to be overthrown, and our Saviour, Christ, 
is to reign in righteousness over all nations. 
But if such a day ever comes, if kingdoms and 
nations are to be wrested from the grasp of 
Satan and given to Christ as his inheritance, 
there must come a day when Christians shall 
learn to speak of millions as freely as they now 
speak of thousands. At the present rate of 
missionary progress a millennium would not 
suffice to prepare the way for the great millen- 
nial reign to which we all look forward with such 
ardent hope. It is a striking comment on the 
feeble faith and limited vision of present-day 
Christians, to note how most of them start as 
if in alarm at the mere mention of an early in- 
gathering of millions of redeemed men and 
women. Christianity must mean this or else 
stand before the w^orld as a gigantic and con- 
fessed failure ; and as Christians w^e owe it to 



^2 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

the faith which we profess to maintain a se- 
rene confidence in God and in the great work 
which he is carrying on among the nations. 

A century hence there will be, possibly, 
seven hundred million, and certainly five hun- 
dred million, English-speaking people on the 
globe, all subject to Christian law, maintaining 
Christian civilization, and exhibiting a much 
higher standard of morals than is seen in either 
England or America to-day. The spirit of 
Christian law will pervade the statute books 
and courts of justice of all nations. Religious 
liberty will have become the unchallenged 
right of the whole human race. Railways will 
have penetrated to the most remote corners of 
the earth. The influence of the Protestant 
nations will be paramount everywhere, and 
every other public influence, whether religious 
or political, will be on the wane. The English 
language, already a potent factor in many mis- 
sion fields, will have become the lingua fra7ic a 
of the w^orld, and will assist wonderfully in per- 
fecting the later stages of the missionary enter- 
prise. In such an age, with a world so revolu- 
tionized, and with all the terms of the problem 
so changed, the final conversion of all nations 
will no longer seem a far-off vision of a few en- 
thusiasts, and the mention of a million converts 
will no longer startle timid or doubting Chris- 



MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 73 

tians. We talk in hesitating tones of the pos- 
sibiHty of seeing a million converts now ; but 
those who will fill our places a century hence 
will look out upon a scene where not a million 
converts, but a million workers, appear. 

I am a firm believer in a good time coming, 
but do not forget that many severe struggles 
lie between us and the good time for which we 
hope and pray. But in the meantime let us 
watch for open doors and hasten to enter them 
whenever found. It is my firm conviction that 
the mission fields of the world afford the best op- 
portunities to the average young man or woman 
to be found anywhere at the present time. 
The teacher who searches for months to find 
employment here can find a thousand children 
waiting for him on the other side of the globe. 
The preacher who struggles to hold together a 
congregation of a few hundred here can find a 
hundred thousand neglected souls in the mis- 
sion field. The young writer who strives in 
vain to gain recognition in the periodical 
literature of America may go abroad and 
join in an effort to provide a literature for un- 
born nations. The hundreds upon hundreds 
of young people who stand idle in the world's 
market place might find employment for heart 
and hand if they could only learn the secret 
of becoming helpers to universal humanity. 



74 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 

Illustrations of various kinds suggest them- 
selves, but time forbids. Suffice it to say that 
the universal Church of Jesus Christ needs to 
ponder well at the present day the whole 
question of missionary possibilities. In many 
cases a very wide gulf separates the possible 
from the actual, and in few cases are the 
startling possibilities of the hour appreciated. 
In these waning years of the nineteenth cen- 
tury all Christians should unite in a supreme 
effort to give an impetus to the missionary 
enterprise w^hich will be felt for long years to 
come, and which will give a distinctive char- 
acter to the next century. There is little or 
no fear of our attempting too much, while 
there is a constant danger of our contracting 
the spiritual paralysis which so often results 
from attempting too little. Nowhere in the 
missionary world do we see any interest suffer- 
ing because too much has been attempted, 
but at a hundred points we see painful em- 
barrassment because plans are too contracted 
or support too spasmodic or insufficient. An 
enterprise w^hich aims at the conversion of a 
world calls for broad statesmanship, farseeing 
views, comprehensive plans, and invincible 
faith; and all these the God of all grace will 
bestow if his people will obey the great mis- 
sionary commission which he has given them. 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

IF an announcement had been made that at 
this time and place I would deliver a lecture 
on woman's work in the United States navy, 
the public would hardly have been more puz- 
zled to understand my proposed treatment of 
the subject than the Christian public in Eng- 
land or America would have been if a lecture 
had been announced fifty years ago on the 
subject which I wish to present to }'ou this 
afternoon. 

During the earlier years of the missionary 
enterprise woman only appears incidentally in 
connection with the work. Strangely enough, 
at the outset the wife of the great pioneer of 
the movement is only mentioned in connection 
with the fact that she absolutely declined to 
go with her husband to India, and that the 
good man's faith was so sorely tested that he 
had actually concluded to leave her behind 
him, and was on board the vessel, ready to sail 
for his distant field, before his wife yielded the 
point and consented to go with him. There 
certainly did not seem to be much hope at that 
critical moment of woman's cooperation in the 



78 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

great work about to be inaugurated. But this 
poor afflicted woman was not destined to be- 
come an exemplar of her sex in subsequent 
years. On the other hand, Dr. Carey was 
about to open a door through which hundreds 
and thousands of Christian women were after- 
ward to enter and bear a truly noble part in 
the great work to be accomplished. 

In the very nature of things it was not pos- 
sible that a work such as was contemplated when 
the modern missionary enterprise v/as first pro- 
jected could be carried on without more or less 
cooperation from Christian women ; and yet it 
is surprising that no special attention was given 
to the subject for so many years. No one 
dreamed of the possibilities that were all the 
time in the grasp of the willing hands of many 
thousands of Christ's best disciples. No one 
ever thought, even for a moment, of the im- 
mense reinforcements which were within easy 
call, and which might have been sent out to 
aid the workers at the front, who were, and 
still are, always sorely pressed for help. This 
is the more strange because constant tokens 
w^ere given by the Lord of the harvest of what 
might be accomplished if the cooperation of 
devoted Christian women could be secured, 
especially in some departments of the work 
for which, from the first, the few women in the 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 79 

field showed a special aptitude. Many of the 
wives of the missionaries proved to be women 
specially gifted for the kind of work which 
they found, and not a few of them acquitted 
themselves nobly in connection with the work 
which their husbands were carrying on. Now 
and then a devoted widow, when left alone in 
her distant field, chose to remain at her post 
and carry on the work which her husband had 
left behind him, and it also happened in a few 
cases that unmarried ladies were sent out for 
special departments of the work ; but these 
cases were so exceptional, and the duties 
assigned to the w^orkers were so limited, that 
we now look back w^ith surprise that the lead- 
ers of those early days were so slow to 
interpret the providential tokens which God 
was so constantly giving them. 

The excellent Christian ladies who were per- 
mitted to bear some slight part in the mission- 
ary work during the first half of the century 
had not the opportunities which their sisters 
who are now in the field enjoy ; and yet we 
must not depreciate the part which they bore 
in the great missionary enterprise. They were 
pioneers. Like faithful watchers proclaiming 
the coming morning, they went abroad in an 
age of intense darkness, at a time when few in- 
telligent Christians in the world comprehended 



8o WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

the value of woman's work in any sphere, and 
slowly and patiently did their part in pointing 
out a better way and holding out the promise 
of a brighter day. The fullness of time had 
not come during their lifetime. We all need 
to comprehend more accurately the meaning 
of this term, ** the fullness of time." We are 
all too prone to become impatient because w^e 
cannot accomplish at once results w^hich we 
clearly see ought to be accomiplished, forget- 
ting that a thing which is abstractly possible 
may practically be impossible. The time may 
not be ripe, or the best agents for accomplish- 
ing the w^ork may not be ready, or various im- 
portant interests may need adjustment, or any 
one of a dozen hindrances may exist of which 
we know nothing. So far as the present discus- 
sion is concerned it is enough for us to know 
that the fullness of time for woman, not only in 
the mission field, but in many other spheres 
of action, had not yet come. 

woman's era. 

A new era dawned upon the womanhood of 
the world a little more than thirty years ago. 
Tokens of its coming had appeared, no doubt, 
much earlier ; but everj^one whose memory 
runs back to that period can remember how 
limited the opportunities of womanhood were 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 8 1 

in every direction. The professions were 
closed against her, and beyond the use of the 
needle and domestic service the only avenue 
of employment which seemed opened to her 
vv^as that of teaching. All at once a hundred 
questions affecting her interests began to be 
raised ; demands for wider opportunities, for the 
removal of needless and even stupid restrictions 
of many kinds, began to be made with an im- 
portunity which commanded attention, and a 
steady movement, bearing on its surface not a 
few features which might justly be included 
under the term emancipation, set in, and con- 
tinues to make headway to the present day. 
Year by year the womanhood of the English- 
speaking world gained advantages of many 
kinds, until it began to seem as if a steady ex- 
pansion of what might be called w^oman's king- 
dom had not only set in, but bade fair to become 
permanent ; that is, the movement which I 
again venture to call the emancipation of 
woman from long ages of unsuspected bondage 
— domestic, social, economic, and even re- 
ligious — continues to the present day, and is 
full of hope for the century soon to open. 

Among the many spheres of action which 
have thus been providentially opened to woman 
none, in my opinion, affords her a better op- 
portunity, and none appeals more urgently to 



82 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

all those excellences of character which are 
peculiar to her, than that which is found in 
the great mission field of the world. In that 
field she has practically a boundless sphere of 
action. She was called to till a ground which, 
through all historic ages, had remained fallow. 
She hears a voice appealing to her from millions 
and hundreds of millions of her own sex, who 
in all the centuries past have never yet seen a 
Christian figure cross their pathway, and never 
heard a voice, from earth or sky, which carried 
hope to their darkened hearts. Not only in 
what has been accomplished, but still more in 
the demands of the present hour, and in the 
splendid opportunities which the coming years 
are sure to unfold, may any earnest woman find 
in the mission field a place in which all her 
best abilities may find abundant employment. 
Not many years have passed since the great 
missionary movement under the direction of 
Christian women first became a recognized 
factor in our Christian Churches ; but already 
enough has been accomplished to prove that 
those who first took up this peculiar work 
were not mistaken in their convictions. 

woman's missionary societies. 

It would be very interesting to pause here 
and tell the story of the origin and progress, 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 83 

thus far, of the many woman's missionary 
societies now at work in the United States. 
At the beginning many old-time friends of the 
missionary cause, and many conspicuous lead- 
ers in the various Churches of the country, 
who had no special connection with missionary 
matters, looked on with undisguised astonish- 
ment at a movement which seemed so utterly 
out of line with all previous action of the 
Church from the apostles' day down to the 
present time. '' What does it mean ? " ^^ Why 
must we have societies for women ? " ^* Why 
not organize a boys' society?" ''Why not 
have a society for little girls?" ''Why not 
have an old men's society?" "Cannot the 
missionary societies now in existence take up 
this work?" "Do not these new societies 
portend mischief in the future?" These and 
scores of similar questions were asked, some- 
times in a bantering tone, but more frequently 
in very sober earnest. The difficulty in the 
case was that the movement was not under- 
stood. Very few, even of the most intelligent 
Christians, know what it is to keep a sharp out- 
look for what our Saviour called the "day of 
visitation ;" and hence nearly all new move- 
ments in the Christian world come with all the 
force of a surprise to the multitude. If all the 
Christian public had been carefully watching 



84 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

the missionary horizon of the world many 
tokens of the coming change would have been 
seen for a dozen years before the first woman^s 
missionary society appeared. In almost every 
mission field a demand for such help as Chris- 
tian women can give was beginning to be felt. 
New doors were opening and nev\^ voices were 
calling ; new emergencies were appearing upon 
the horizon. Meanwhile the existing mission- 
ary societies were not found adapted to the 
changes of the hour. Their leaders could not 
comprehend a situation which, in many of its 
features, was wholly new. It is easy enough 
now to see that this and that and the other 
thing should have been done, or might have 
been done, but the practical matter of fact 
which we have to consider is that none of 
these things were done. Men and women 
seldom do the best ideal thing, but in very 
many cases they do the best possible thing, 
and in the case before us this appears to have 
been the course which was followed. It would 
have been better, probably, if no woman's 
society had been organized, and that, instead 
of a new organization, the old societies had 
been so modified as to meet the new demand. 
I say it would probably have been better, but 
I do not believe it could possibly have been 
done. The practical fact remains that in the 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 85 

course of a few years every great Protestant 
Church in England and America found itself 
provided with a Woman's Foreign Missionary 
Society, fully equipped, with an active mem- 
bership, a thorough organization, and an abun- 
dant zeal for the great work Vvdiich God had set 
before his anointed handmaidens. 

About a quarter of a century has passed 
since these missionary societies began to be 
organized, and it is nov/ time for us to look at 
their work and see what has been accomplished. 
As I am better acquainted v/ith India than 
with any other field I shall confine my descrip- 
tion of the work abroad mainly to the various 
fields under my own superintendence in India 
and Malaysia. No doubt an equally interest- 
ing story could be told in reference to China, 
Japan, Mexico, or other fields. 

THE ZENANA. 

First of all, let miC speak of the zenana. 
This is the namic of a part of the family dwell- 
ing in which the women are kept in seclusion. 
It is simply the women's quarters in an ordi- 
nary house belonging to a family of the higher 
class. You are probably aware that both Hin- 
doos and Mohamm.edans who are able to afford 
that style of living keep their wives and 
daughters in absolute seclusion. A little girl 



86 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

IS allowed a good deal of liberty until she is 
about seven or eight years of age, when her 
face no longer is seen in public. This style of 
living, however, is much more expensive than 
the more simple home life of the lower classes, 
and hence only a minority of the people can 
afford either to supply the house room or to 
keep their wives and daughters in idleness. It 
is a very great mistake to suppose, as very 
commonly is supposed in this country, that 
these women and girls are unwilling captives 
pining for liberty. In oriental lands, even 
more than in western countries, fashion is om- 
nipotent, and the power of social respectability 
is so potent that almost any unveiled woman 
in the East would gladly surrender her liberty 
if she could gain the social promotion which is 
implied in belonging to the zenana. True 
enough, the women who are subject to this 
system are always very glad to get a glimpse 
of the outdoor world, but only one in a hun- 
dred would accept the life of unveiled women 
if they had the opportunity. They would 
shrink with fear from such a proposal, as if it 
implied a surrender of moral character. Life 
in these zenanas is not so unhappy as is often 
represented, and yet it must, in the nature of 
things, be a dwarfed life, and in many of its 
features it can hardly be otherwise than a sad life. 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 87 

The first movement in the direction of send- 
ing lady missionaries to India was in the inter- 
est of these zenana women. It was known 
that they had no educational advantages, that 
they never could hear the sound of the Gospel, 
that no messenger of Christ could possibly 
reach them in the ordinary course of events, 
and hence the thought occurred that if Chris- 
tian women would go to them as teachers a 
double purpose might be accomplished. The 
women and girls might be taught to read, and 
in this way get access not only to Bible truths, 
but in an important sense to the outer world. 
At the same time the Christian woman who 
entered the zenana as a teacher would have 
the privilege, through the medium of conver- 
sation, of telling of Christ and his salvation, of 
heaven, of immortality, and of all that is em- 
braced in the term Christian hope. An appeal 
in behalf of the millions of women who are in- 
mates of the zenanas of India met with a ready 
response. But God had a much wider field 
in view than the zenana when he moved his 
handmaidens to undertake this task. Divine 
plans are seldom limited to a single field of 
action. The work was commenced in good 
faith among the zenana women, and met with 
immediate and marked success. A single 
generation has not yet been passed, and those 



88 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

engaged in the work now meet with both 
Hindoo and Mohammedan competitors in con- 
stantly increasing numbers. These competitors 
are women who have been educated by the 
missionary ladies themselves. Schools have 
been organized and are constantly increasing 
in number, and those v/ho do not wish to em- 
ploy missionaries find it quite possible now to 
get women and girls of their own religion to 
take up the work. Some missionary ladies 
feel a little disconcerted when they meet this 
unexpected rivalry; but I mention it merely 
as an evidence of their success. We should 
all rejoice that so recent a movement has 
already made such marked advances, that 
those who a few years ago were utterly illiter- 
ate are nov/ able to compete with educated 
ladies who have gone halfway round the 
globe to carry on their missionary work. 

QUIET PROGRESS. 

The success of this work, however, does not 
end here. While the zenana system is not 
abolished in a day, and while some features of 
the work are less than satisfactory, yet in the 
larger cities there is undoubtedly quite a steady 
movement in the direction of the social eman- 
cipation of woman in India. In many little 
matters the prejudices of ages are giving way. 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 89 

The women and girls are gaining new privi- 
leges, by inches, it is true, and yet they are 
gaining. Those who have longest experience 
in the country are not anxious to see their 
progress much more rapid than it is. A few 
cases of painful failure, resulting from a too 
rapid change In social conditions, have taught 
us that all movements of this kind must comie, 
like the springtime, after a long and dreary 
winter. The flowers of spring cannot be called 
forth in an hour. There must be days and 
weeks of light and warmth and growth be- 
fore the time of flowering and fruitage comes 
round. The work commenced among the 
zenana women in India is advancing rapidly 
enough. 

I will here mention a little episode that oc- 
curred not long ago in connection with our 
woman's work in a large city in India, premis- 
ing, however, that we are obliged to be very 
careful how we make public reference to such 
incidents. I suppose I enjoy the singular honor 
of being the first European man who was ever 
admitted to an assembly composed exclusively 
of respectable zenana women. The circum- 
stances were very peculiar. Without a single 
exception, not one, in an assembly numbering 
perhaps one hundred and fifty women and girls, 
and belonging to very respectable families, 



90 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

had ever before been admitted into the pres- 
ence of a person of the opposite sex, except 
in the case of fathers, husbands, or brothers. 
Many of the women, however, had become 
somewhat enh'ghtened and viewed the matter 
sensibly. My age and supposed sanctity made 
my case somewhat exceptional, and I enjoyed 
the rare privilege of seeing this respectable as- 
sembly and spending some time among them 
without any demonstration of either fear or 
displeasure on their part ; and I have no doubt 
that before many years such a privilege will 
cease to be regarded as in any way extraor- 
dinary. 

A WIDENING SPHERE. 

I have said that a much wider sphere of 
action awaited the first lady missionaries than 
had been anticipated by either themselves or 
those who sent them. Their attention was 
quickly drawn to the condition of women gen- 
erally, and especially to the fact that female 
education had scarcely yet been recognized at 
all. When I first went to India, in 1859, ■"• 
found our mission located in a field containing 
about seventeen million inhabitants, and among 
all these millions I do not suppose there were 
seventeen women and girls who knew how to 
read. Among such a people it was inevitable 
that Christian ladies from America should feel 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 9 1 

that it was woe unto them if they did not try 
to give at least an elementary education to 
these utterly illiterate women. I may here 
mention that education, like vital Christianity, 
IS in a measure contagious. These ladies knew 
very well that they could never teach all the 
women around them, but they also knew that 
if they could establish schools and in this way 
get education rooted among the women of the 
country it would make headway almost of 
itself. The presence of educated persons is 
almost sure to create a desire among the un- 
educated for the higher privileges of those who 
are able to read and write, and who in conse- 
quence occupy a more important social position 
than the ignorant. In addition to this general 
demand for schools among the people at large 
a more special demand v/as found among the 
Christian converts. At first these converts 
were few in number, but as they began to in- 
crease somewhat rapidly it was found abso- 
lutely necessary to educate their daughters, 
and hence many ladies who went to India as 
missionaries have never taken any part in 
what is now popularly known as zenana work. 
They have found the demand for the education 
of the converts so urgent and so constantly 
increasing that they can give attention to 
nothing else. Elementary schools for girls 



92 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

have been established in literally hundreds of 
villages and towns, while at central points 
boarding schools of higher grade have also 
been established and are increasing both in 
numbers and efficiency. I cannot in the 
brief time at my disposal give you more than 
an outline of this work. Suffice it to say that 
in the field where, as I have just said, we failed 
to find seventeen women able to read among 
a population of seventeen million persons 
we have now not only many schools of a very 
respectable grade, but have actually established 
one school at Lucknow on a college basis. 
Stranger still, so much progress has been made, 
and so marked has been the change of public 
sentiment among both Hindus and Moham- 
medans, that an energetic movement is now on 
foot in the same city of Lucknow to establish 
what might be called a rival college, that is, 
an institution of college grade for women and 
girls in which no Christianity shall be taught. 
This, again, I do not regard as in any measure 
an unfavorable symptom. We should rejoice 
rather that the general cause is making such 
satisfactory progress, and for my own part I 
sincerely wish that the people of India could 
and would maintain a hundred colleges for 
women, even if they should as carefully ex- 
clude every Christian missionary and minister 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 93 

from such institutions as Stephen Girard did 
from the college which he founded in Phila- 
delphia. 

FEMALE EVANGELISTS. 

During my long residence in India I have 
met with many surprises, but perhaps nothing 
has been more unexpected than the demand 
which of late years has arisen for evangelistic 
work among the w^omen. Generations ago the 
public in England and America were much less 
familiar with the idea of women evangelists 
than they have become since ; but that which 
at best seemed difficult or unusual in the United 
States would have seemed very nearly impos- 
sible if proposed at an earlier day in India. 
The demand for this peculiar kind of work was 
perceived at a comparatively early day, but the 
peculiar difficulties of the situation in a coun- 
try like India prevented most persons from an- 
ticipating the measure of success which has 
been achieved since. 

I have already remarked that all v/omen in 
India are not kept in seclusion. In fact, only a 
comparatively small minority of them belong 
to the class known as zenana w^omen ; but, with 
rare exceptions, it may be said that all women, 
even including the majority of Christians, are 
in many respects inaccessible to the ordinary 
Christian minister. The standard of public 



94 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

taste does not admit of the free interchange of 
even ordinary civilities between the sexes to 
which we are accustomed in the United States. 
The idea of women being seen in a large as- 
sembly, seated in public like men, and enjoy- 
ing all the privileges of the occasion with the 
same freedom which is accorded to their hus- 
bands and brothers, is utterly foreign to the 
standard of taste which has been recognized 
throughout the empire in all past ages. This 
accounts for the fact that when missionaries go 
on itinerating tours they seldom see a woman in 
their audiences. A very few timid creatures 
may be seen peering around the corner of a 
house near by, or looking down from some of 
the flat roofs in the vicinity, but it is very sel- 
dom indeed that even half a dozen women can 
be induced to take their places among the men 
gathered under a village tree or on some va- 
cant spot beside one of the village streets. 

The difficulty caused by this timidity be- 
comes more embarrassing when an attempt is 
made to correct any errors observed in the do- 
mestic life of the people. The ordinary mis- 
sionary has few opportunities for observing life 
as it really is within the sacred precincts of a 
village home. No men in the world are more 
jealous of their homes than the simple peasants 
of India. Every one of them regards his mud- 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 95 

walled hut as at once his castle and his temple, 
and, under ordinary rules, a strange man is not 
expected to cross its threshold. Christianity 
may ultimately break down these barriers, but 
for a generation at least it will be impossible 
for the missionary so completely to win his way 
beyond the doorway of the hut as to be able 
to exert much practical influence among the 
women within. And even if he were to gain 
free admission his defective knowledge of the 
peculiar notions and habits of the women would 
make him at best a very sorry teacher. It 
IS very different with the lady missionary from 
England or America who masters the language 
of the people, and, having gained ready admit- 
tance to the homes of the people, is quickly 
able to understand all their peculiar notions 
and habits, and thus becomes able to correct 
what is wrong, suggest many little reforms, and 
inspire the people with better purposes and 
brighter hopes. 

For some years past it has been abundantly 
clear to our most faithful missionaries that the 
question of employing women as evangelists in 
India is no longer one of expediency, but of 
absolute necessity. Thousands upon thou- 
sands of the wives and mothers of our converts 
are still so deplorably ignorant, and so wedded 
to many of their former notions and customs, 



96 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

that the missionary despairs of building up a 
healthy Christian community unless something 
can be done for them. I am happy to be able 
to testify that very much has been done. Many 
of our ladies in India have seen and felt for 
years the necessity for this kind of work, and 
have given it their best attention. If time per- 
mitted I might speak of success achieved in 
many different places, but it will suffice, per- 
haps, to mention only one conspicuous example 
of what can be done by brave, earnest, and 
faithful labor of this kind. 

AN ANOINTED LEADER. 

Miss Phebe Rowe, though born and brought 
up in India, is well known to many thousands 
in the United States. She paid a brief visit 
to this country some years ago, and during her 
stay made an extraordinary impression upon 
all who came in contact with her. With an 
unusual command of the Hindustani language, 
she is able to reach all classes, using a dialect 
which is understood by the most ignorant, and 
which yet does not offend the most fastidious 
ears by its remarkable simplicity. Miss Rowe 
seemed to be a person of frail health, and cer- 
tainly without much power of physical endur- 
ance ; but, seeing the increasing demand for 
evangehstic work among the wives of our con- 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 9/ 

verts, she consented to be set apart for this 
kind of labor, and in prosecuting it she has de- 
veloped not only remarkable ability for the 
work, but has also gained in physical strength, 
so that her endurance of fatigue, and sometimes 
of exposure, during her tours in the most try- 
ing season of the year, have become a wonder 
to all who knew her. Her chief mission is to 
the Christians and to the Christian women ; but 
I must remark in passing that slie has long 
since found, what every such worker must find, 
that it is utterly impossible for any woman to 
confine her labors in work of this kind to one 
sex. If she gains access to the women, and in- 
fluences them for good, she must in the nature 
of things also influence their husbands, and it 
has constantly happened that while speaking 
to the wife the husband and sons have become 
interested listeners. Not only this ; it is nearly 
impossible for a lady with her peculiar gifts to 
enter any village without meeting some of the 
most respectable men of the place, and, as her 
errand must always be explained, it becomes 
inevitable that she will, more or less informally, 
be found preaching to them. Her singing is 
listened to Vv^ith the most extreme delight by 
all classes, and although the excellent ladies of 
the Foreign Missionary Society have repeatedly 
caused it to be understood that they wish only 



98 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

to support work among the women, Miss Rowe 
IS constantly illustrating how impossible it is 
for their directions to be followed. In other 
words, while trying to be an evangelist among 
the baptized women in the various Christian 
communities, she has really become a most 
useful evangelist among all classes. 

Miss Rowe has associated with her in this 
work two or three Hindustani women, and as 
time passes will no doubt find others with like 
graces and gifts for this same work. I look 
upon her as a pioneer, as the forerunner of a 
mighty host. Other women will undoubtedly 
be raised up and in the providence of God 
thrust out into this same work. There are 
peculiar difficulties in connection with such 
work, especially when the evangelists are na- 
tives of India ; but as time passes our ladies 
will, no doubt, learn how to overcome these 
difficulties, as they have scores of other ob- 
stacles in times gone by. 

There are over one hundred and forty mil- 
lion women and girls in India. The state- 
ment will seem incredible, but actually over 
twenty-two million of these women are 
widows. Many of these widows are chil- 
dren of tender age, and yet, if the rules of 
Hinduism are strictly enforced, their widow- 
hood is perpetual. They are subjected to many 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 99 

hardships, and must go through Hfe beheving 
that they are the victims of misfortune, that 
their unhappy lot can never be alleviated in 
the present world, while any thought of a 
better world to come, if ever presented to their 
minds at all, can only appear in dim and fading 
outline. The mere statement of these facts will 
suffice to impress upon you the vastness of the 
mighty work which Christian women have 
undertaken in India. I could, no doubt, if 
time permitted, produce quite as strong a case 
in behalf of the women of China and other 
non-Christian regions. The hope of the woman- 
hood of the world is bound up in the progress 
of Christianity, and to the Christian women of 
England and America, more than to all other 
living persons, is committed the sacred trust of 
making Christianity accomplish its full divine 
purpose in reaching, enlightening, elevating, 
and emancipating the hundreds of millions of 
women and girls who are to-day sitting in deep 
mental and spiritual darkness. 

ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES. 

I wish now to call your attention to a feature 
of woman's work in the mission field which has 
thus far happily attracted little attention. I 
refer to woman as administrator of missionary, 
or even ecclesiastical, affairs. I need not say 



100 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

that this subject, so far as it affects the United 
States, has for some years past been a burning 
question. It is practically the same question 
on the other side of the globe, but happily in 
India this burning question does not burn. It 
has been calmly dealt with from the first, and 
privileges have been conceded to our mission- 
ary ladies which would startle both conserva- 
tive and liberal men in this country, if they 
could only perceive how freely the whole ques- 
tion has been dealt with in the mission field. 
Indeed, I have often doubted whether in India 
itself many persons had given serious thought 
to the subject. When a woman is sent abroad 
as a missionary, and succeeds in creating 
Christian agencies of various kinds around her, 
it follows in the very nature of the case that 
she must exert more or less authority in direct- 
ing those who have become subordinate to her. 
She must, as I have already shown, very often 
be found talking to mixed assemblies, and 
sometimes to assemblies of men only; and if 
her talk is carefully analyzed it will be found 
to resemble very closely the kind of talk which 
in America is called preaching. Hence it is 
that many women who would shrink from the 
very thought of becoming preachers are prac- 
tically doing the work of preachers every day 
of their lives. They are also found in the 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 10 1 

schoolroom, and in the course of events often 
become, not only teachers, but superintendents 
of schools. Their agencies of various kinds 
expand more and more, until their jurisdiction 
becomes in many instances a very wide one. 
Then, when the missionary, or missionaries, in 
charge of the city, town, or district where the 
work of this lady is carried on, chance to die, 
or to be sent out of the country in broken 
health, it has repeatedly happened that, in the 
absence of any male missionary, one of the 
ladies has been obliged to take charge of the 
work. 

In this way, without intending it, without at 
all realizing what they are doing, Christian 
women have over and over again assumed the 
responsibility of directing the ecclesiastical 
affairs, not only of a church, but of groups of 
churches, and while performing these duties as 
a matter of course they have been obliged to 
superintend ordained ministers. The question is 
sometimes hotly debated in the United States 
whether a woman should, under any possible 
circumstances, be ordained. But while you 
are debating here, as a somewhat startling 
matter of fact, Christian women have practi- 
cally assumed higher duties and successfully 
discharged them, not by usurping the peculiar 
functions of ministerial ordination, but by di- 



102 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

recting the men v/ho are ordained. This has 
been done, and is still being done, without 
creating any controversy, without exciting any 
surprise, without raising any comment as to 
the possible outcome of so extraordinary a pro- 
ceeding ; in other words, as I have already 
mentioned, we have learned how to deal with 
this burning question without letting the ques- 
tion burn. 

To explain this case more fully, I ought to 
say that among the many ladies who have come 
to India are some from Australia and a few 
from the United States, who have been sent 
out, not as missionaries to women merely, but 
simply as missionaries to the people. It was 
probably expected by those who first devised 
this kind of missionary work that the ladies 
would carry on their work chiefly by employing 
natives of the country as teachers and preach- 
ers. This has been done to some extent, but, 
as you will have anticipated from what I have 
already said, it cannot be done very long. In 
the very nature of the case ladies occupying 
such a position must assume duties which are 
ordinarily discharged by bishops, presiding 
elders, or other high functionaries of the 
Church. If anyone is alarmed by the picture 
which I am giving of the manner in which 
Christian ladies assume responsibility when 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 103 

there seems occasion for it, I may allay the 
fears of such by saying that, so far as I know, 
the missionary ladies of the foreign field are 
careful to avoid the assumption of any duties 
which pertain to ordained ministers, unless 
there be very exceptional circumstances to 
make it necessary. In one case two American 
ladies are carrying on a successful work in a 
remote station, and have converts from time 
to time who need baptism ; but instead of per- 
forming this duty themselves they think it 
more wise, or at least expedient, not to force 
the question to an issue, even though they may 
have no doubts concerning the validity of such 
baptism, and hence they have secured the serv- 
ices of a Hindustani ordained minister, who 
works under their direction and administers 
both baptism and the Lord's Supper when 
occasion calls for it. 

A NEW SPHERE. 

Among the many kinds of labor which the 
mission field presents not the least promising 
in coming years will be, I think, the task of 
providing a Christian literature for the millions 
of Christians who are to be raised up in Asiatic 
and other non-Christian countries. We can 
easily understand how comparatively little 
attention has been given to this subject in the 



i04 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

past, but it IS every year becoming more impor- 
tant, and its demands more imperative, and in 
all successful missions this kind of work must 
soon be taken up systematically and prosecuted 
with all possible vigor. It is a significant fact 
that the late Miss Tucker, better known in 
England and America as ^' A. L. O. E./' the 
title by which she was first introduced to the 
reading public, after having achieved marked 
success as a writer in England, became so im- 
pressed with the necessity for literary work in 
India that she went out to that country in ad- 
vanced life and devoted her latest and best 
years to the preparation of Christian books and 
periodicals in the Hindustani language. She 
did other work, it is true, but this was her 
chief mission, and it proved eminently success- 
ful. Although obliged to depend upon the 
services of a translator, she became able to 
adapt her style and range of thought to the 
wants of her readers, and it is perhaps not too 
much to say that the comparatively few years 
which she spent in India were worth more, and 
will be found in the end to have produced more 
lasting good, than all the labors of her previous 
life. She worked bravely, and finally died at 
her post. 

It certainly seems that her example should 
call attention, in terms not to be misunderstood 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. IO5 

or neglected, to the urgent demand which is 
making itself felt for a Christian literature for 
the coming millions of Christians in the empire 
of India. The Woman's Foreign Missionary 
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
deserves mention for having been among the 
first to perceive the importance of this depart- 
ment of our work. Some years ago an en- 
dowment fund of twenty-five thousand dollars 
was set aside for the special purpose of pub- 
lishing a series of Christian periodicals specially 
adapted to the wants of the women of India. 
A prominent thought in connection with this 
enterprise was that of making provision for the 
women in the zenanas, whose range of thought 
is necessarily narrow, and for whom a special 
effort of this kind seemed to be needed. Aided 
by the proceeds of this fund, our missionaries 
are now publishing monthly periodicals for 
w^omen in five different languages, and the work 
has long since ceased to be an experiment. 
These periodicals have been successful in a 
marked degree, and every year are gaining a 
wider field and a more marked success. It af- 
fords me much pleasure to say that one of the 
last official acts which I performed before leaving 
India was that of setting aside Tvliss Blair, one 
of our deaconesses, formerly of Painesville, O., 
for the exclusive duty of performing literary 



I06 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

work in connection with our publishing house 
in Calcutta; and I hope to live to set apart at 
least two such literary workers in connection 
with each of our four publishing houses in 
that great field. I have no doubt whatever that 
before many years shall have passed it will be 
seen that one of the most important tasks 
which God has in view for the Christian women 
who choose a missionary life will be more or 
less directly in the line of literary work. 

MEDICAL WORK. 

One of the most notable achievements of 
women in recent years has been the success- 
ful introduction, not only of medicine, but of 
the medical profession, among the women of 
India. Less than a single generation ago 
there was not even one lady physician among 
all the hundreds of millions of women in Asia ; 
and when it is remembered that in most parts 
of that great continent the women of the higher 
classes were rigidly secluded, and in conse- 
quence beyond the reach of ordinary physicians, 
their deplorable condition can be realized 
in some degree at least. It was a Christian 
woman, Miss Clara Swain, M.D., a missionary 
sent out from your own State of New York, 
who was signally honored of God by becoming 
the first person who ever carried intelligent 



WOIVIAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 107 

medical relief to the secluded zenana women 
of India, and thus became the pioneer of what 
has since become one of the most interesting 
movements of modern times. Miss Swain was 
quickly followed by others, and after a few years 
a further great step was taken in advance by 
opening an informal medical school for women. 
In due time Lady Dufferin became interested 
in this great work, the Indian government 
gave it liberal aid, and the women of India 
became at once heirs of a new source of relief 
in sickness and a new and highly honorable 
avenue to employment in the medical profes- 
sion. 

What this means to the young women and 
girls of India I can hardly make you under- 
stand. I have myself seen twenty young ladies, 
all daughters of village converts, in attendance 
at a medical college. These girls had spent 
their childhood in extreme poverty. Their 
fathers had been accustomed to earn about 
two dollars a month and to occupy a very 
low social position in the village community. 
But one of these girls on graduation stepped 
at once into a situation worth twenty-five dol- 
lars a month, an income which in the eyes of 
the simple villagers, no doubt, seemed princely. 
A new career has thus been opened to the 
womanhood of India, while relief from pain and 



I08 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

Sickness in a hundred forms has been secured 
for all coming generations to uncounted mil- 
lions of Indian women. All this is to-day, 
under God, owing to missionary ladies, and I 
am glad to be able to testify that more young 
women are offering their services for medical 
work abroad than ever before. The door is 
still wide open to Christian workers of this 
class, and the great movement has probably 
only begun. 

I could greatly expand this list of the open- 
ing fields which God is setting before our 
Christian women, but time forbids. Suflnce it 
to say that their work in the mission field is 
only begun. The ladies now abroad are 
merely the pioneers of the movement. The 
field is practically boundless. The demands 
of the present day are increasing constantly, 
and ten years hence will be more than double 
what they are at this hour. It is an extraor- 
dinary fact, and one which is not at all 
appreciated at its full value, either abroad or 
at homxC, that the missionary ladies, in India, at 
least, already outnumber the men. They are 
in a majority at every great missionary gather- 
ing throughout the country ; their number is 
increasing also more rapidly than that of their 
brethren, and it becomes more and more cer- 
tain that with their increase in numbers will 



WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. IO9 

come a corresponding expansion of their priv- 
ileges and responsibilities. The work is so 
vast, so urgent, its demands are so imperative, 
that every possible agency must be employed 
whenever opportunity offers; and hence I 
look forward confidently to the marshaling of a 
mighty host of Christian women on every great 
mission field throughout the world. The oft- 
quoted words of the psalmist, as correctly 
rendered in one of the versions of the Old 
Testament — ^' God gave the word ; great was 
the company of the women who published it '* — 
seems likely to have its most marked fulfill- 
ment in the modern mission field of the world. 
God has given a word of light and promise for 
the nations in darkness, and while all men, 
women, and children will have a portion of 
the common duty to perform the most striking 
feature of the mighty task will probably be the 
presence of thousands upon thousands of 
Christian women, gathered out of all Christian 
nations, and sent out to the ends of the earth, 
worthily representing Him to whom the wom- 
anhood of the race is indebted for the new 
world of hope and life and liberty into 
which women everywhere are now so freely 
entering. 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 

MANY years ago, when on a visit to the 
United States, I was invited to meet a 
few gentlemen representing one of the evan- 
gelical denominations of the country and 
confer with them in reference to a proposal to 
establish a Christian mission in India or some 
other foreign land. The Church in question 
had not as yet taken any part in the great 
missionary movement, and the intelligent gen- 
tlemen who met me knew very little about 
the details of such work. They only under- 
stood in a general way that they were to con- 
sider a proposal to send a few Christian men 
and women to some non-Christian country to 
persuade the people to abandon their false 
faiths and become Christians. At that time 
my own experience in the mission field was 
extremely limited ; but as I talked with those 
good men I quickly became impressed with 
the thought that not only the Church which 
they represented, but all the Churches, had 
given too little attention to the general subject 
of missionary polity. Even in missionary cir- 



114 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

cles this subject has been overlooked, or, if 
considered at all, has been confined to the dis- 
cussion of a few questions of method or to 
incidental questions of local interest. Even 
at this late day the average supporter of 
Christian missions gives little thought to such 
a subject, and missionaries themselves do not 
always realize how much they lose and how 
much they are hampered and hindered in their 
work, sometimes by the application of a wrong 
polity and sometimes by the want of any set- 
tled polity whatever. The experience of a 
hundred years ought to suffice to settle a great 
many important questions, and good men who 
propose to take up new missionary work ought 
no longer to be found standing where William 
Carey stood a century ago, with everything to 
learn and inevitable mistakes and failures 
awaiting the first advances into untried fields. 
It is always interesting to watch the first 
efforts of missionaries in new fields. In most 
cases the workers are young and without much 
experience. They are ardent and hopeful, and 
quite ready to follow any pathway which 
seems to lead to assured success ; but the av- 
erage man cannot carve out a new way for 
himself. The missionary is not gifted above 
his fellows, and hence it generally happens 
that he adopts the policy pursued by his near- 



MISSIONARY POLITY. II 5 

est neighbors, and seems content to follow a 
routine which has the sanction of usage, even 
though it may not have received the seal of 
approved success. His training for missionary 
work has been defective. The military officer 
must have very much more than a knowledge 
of military tactics. His profession has become 
a science, with certain military principles to be 
thoroughly mastered and applied as occasion 
offers in active service. He dare not become 
a mere imitator. He has read and studied 
sketches of a hundred campaigns and battles^ 
and finds their lessons invaluable ; but he dare 
not follow in all its details any other man's 
course, however successful it may have been. 
Surely the missionary ought to study his pro- 
fession, if I may call it a profession, in the 
same spirit. It embodies great principles 
which he ought to master ; it has created a 
history of which he cannot afford to be igno- 
rant, and it supplies him with lessons which 
he will find of great practical value all along 
the course of his missionary career. 

A MISSIONARY CONSTITUENCY NEEDED. 

The missionary work originates in the home 
land, and hence it will be best in discussing 
certain points of missionary polity to begin at 
the fountain head of the movement. The first 



Il6 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

important factor in the movement to claim our 
attention is the constituency on which the 
missionary relies for support, both financial 
and moral. This constituency should not be 
impersonal in its character or uncertain in its 
numbers or without organization or definite- 
ness of purpose. It has become somewhat 
common of late years to deprecate all attempts 
to discover donors or to collect subscriptions, 
under the mistaken notion that our faith wall 
be more conspicuously honored if we never 
ask human beings for help and trust in God 
alone for all we need. As an exercise for our 
faith there may be something to say for this 
view, but we owe something to those v/ho 
give as well as to ourselves, and we must con- 
sider their relation to the work as w^ell as our 
own. The w^hole Christian world should be 
enlisted in support of the missionary enter- 
prise, and this cannot be done by hidden 
methods, and even if it could it is more than 
doubtful if the attempt should be made. 
When a Christian man or woman assumes an 
obligation in connection with this work it 
should be lifelong, and such a person should 
be placed in a relation to the work w^iich can 
be depended upon. An intelligent, devoted, 
and permanent constituency is, under God, 
the first condition of success in missionary 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 11/ 

work. It must be composed of men and 
women who believe in Christ^s commission to 
the Church, who believe in their own personal 
call to support the work, who pray for its suc- 
cess, and who are committed to its support 
for life. 

When the modern missionary movement 
commenced it was not generally expected 
that it would branch out on denominational 
lines ; but such a result was from the first in- 
evitable, and no doubt it has been best that it 
took this course. All Christian organizations 
inevitably follow the lines on which they are 
accustomed to move, and it is the part of 
wisdom quietly to recognize facts of this kind 
rather than to try to contend against them. 
In every conflict with the inevitable we are 
sure to be worsted. As a practical matter of 
fact all the missionary constituencies of the 
world are to-day working on denominational 
lines, or else supported by persons whose more 
or less peculiar views distinguish them from 
others and make them denominational in all 
but name. This makes it less difficult to 
discover a given constituency and more easy 
to organize a large body of supporters of the 
cause, both for prayer and vigorous efforts to 
promote the interests of the work. This ad- 
vantage should never be lost sight of under 



Il8 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

any circumstances. The individual is traced 
to the church to which he belongs, not that he 
may be concealed within its precincts, but 
rather brought out into the light and engaged 
in vigorous efforts to help forward the greatest 
work of all the ages. 

In the Methodist Episcopal Church an at- 
tempt has been made to embrace the entire 
membership in the constituency of the Mis- 
sionary Society, or, to quote the official phrase- 
ology, ** the support of missions is committed 
to the churches as such." This is perhaps a 
move in the direction of the best ideal, but 
unfortunately an immense constituency of two 
and a half million Christians cannot be created 
by any single act of an ecclesiastical body. 
The ecclesiastical machinery may be put in 
operation in the interest of a given cause, and 
in the fullness of time a great Church may 
become fully committed to the support of an 
organized effort to evangelize the non-Chris- 
tian nations; but so far as the immediate pres- 
ent is concerned the constituency in question 
is in a large measure only a nominal one. In 
every part of the country pastors and congre- 
gations can be found who practically repudiate 
all missionary obligations. They may go so 
far as to allow a formal collection to be taken 
once a year in the public congregation, but 



MISSIONARY POLITY. II9 

this is done under constraint, and sometimes 
under protest. Leaders of the people are 
heard protesting against the poHcy of sending 
money out of the country when it is so urgently 
needed at home. Men and women of this class 
do not in anyway belong to a missionary con- 
stituency, and it is a serious mistake to assume 
that they do. The missionary enterprise de- 
mands the support of Christian men and 
women who not only believe in its claims, but 
who are as devoted to its interests as they are 
to their own, and who no more think of doubt- 
ing its success than of giving up their faith in 
Christ or their hope of heaven. 

In this case it is not desirable to change the 
policy of the Church, so far as its ultimate ob- 
ject is concerned, but it is very much to be de- 
sired that a systematic effort be commenced 
to enlist and organize an avowed constituency 
of missionary workers and supporters. This is 
a crying need in all the Churches. It will not 
do to depend upon a fluctuating public opin- 
ion or upon an uncertain enthusiasm. A vast 
army of missionary supporters is needed, and 
this army, like every successful army, must be 
well organized. If five hundred thousand or 
a million Christians were enrolled as members 
of a missionary society, all pledged to pay a 
stated annual contribution, and all obligated 



I20 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

to support the cause in every time of special 
emergency, the violent financial ebb and flow 
which so often cripples the work of our foreign 
missions would almost wholly cease. It would, 
of course, require some time and much labor 
to enlist and organize a vast constituency of 
this kind, but until this w^ork is taken in hand 
none of the great missionary societies can make 
much further progress. There must be organ- 
ization, and thorough organization, in every 
work of this kind before success can become 
either general or permanent. Let every mis- 
sion in the world be sustained by a well-known, 
definitely constituted, and well-organized con- 
stituency, and the w^orking efficiency of the 
foreign missionary body will be doubled in a 
single year, 

THE HOME MANAGEMENT. 

Having secured a constituency, the next step 
in the development of missionary work is that 
of providing for the home management of the 
various interests connected with it. This is 
usually done by organizing boards of directors, 
or managers, with their powers more or less 
strictly defined, and acting sometimes under 
the direct authority of a Church, but more fre- 
quently as the governing body of a missionary 
society. The duties of most of these officials 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 12 1 

are largely advisory, but a select few — usually 
limited to a president, treasurer, and one or 
more secretaries — are intrusted with the prac- 
tical administration of the financial interests of 
the mission or missions under their care. So 
far as the mere statement of polity is con- 
cerned, a plan of this kind is perhaps as good 
as any other that could be devised, but when 
in practical operation its merits or demerits 
will be found to depend very largely upon the 
qualifications of the members of the board, and 
especially upon those intrusted with official 
duties. It need hardly be said that these per- 
sons should be unhesitating believers in the 
missionary enterprise and intensely interested 
in it. They should also be well informed, not 
only in all that pertains to the general subject, 
but more especially in all the details of the 
missions under their care. They should know 
the history of these missions, the character of 
the people among whom, they are planted, the 
hindrances and helps to the work, the names 
and some particulars concerning the mission- 
aries in the several fields, and they should be 
acquainted with the progress which the work 
makes from year to year, and know whether 
the money which they help to administer is 
profitably bestowed or not. Unfortunately, 
however, it is extremely difficult to find two or 



122 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

three dozen men who are otherwise quaHfied 
to serve on such a board who can be persuaded 
that they have leisure enough to read and study, 
and if need be travel, in order to qualify them- 
selves for such a service as this would indicate. 
The result is that the average member of a 
board of missions is not expected to know 
much more than other men concerning mis- 
sions in general or those of his own society in 
particular. 

Many years ago I chanced to be in attend- 
ance in a large ecclesiastical assembly, when a 
discussion occurred concerning the selection of 
secretaries for a missionary society. A dozen 
or more speakers took part, and it was curious 
to observe how nearly everyone attached the 
first importance to platform eloquence as a 
qualification for the post. Power to organize 
counted for nothing, missionary experience 
counted for nothing, knowledge of the work 
counted for nothing, ability in finance counted 
for nothing, and, worse than all, faith in and 
devotion to the missionary cause counted for 
nothing, while popular eloquence counted for 
everything. It was the virtual recognition of 
a policy which would have passed over Ulysses 
S. Grant and put Wendell Phillips at the head 
of our armies, to the very great peril of the 
nation. Those who are placed in positions of 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 12 3 

greatest influence and authority in connection 
with missionary affairs should always be chosen 
with reference to their special qualifications for 
the peculiar work to be done. When a choice 
of this kind is made in a great popular assem- 
bly it is sometimes amusing, and at the same 
time startling, to observe that among a dozen 
competitors not more than one or two are per- 
sons who have ever been known to evince any 
special interest in the missionary cause or to 
have any special knowledge of the work which 
they wish to direct. 

** But how," it may be asked, *^ can we mend 
matters? Where can we find men fitted for 
the duty by reading, study, and observation, 
and at the same time possessing the natural 
gifts and missionary grace needed for such po- 
sitions?" 

Such persons can be found; but if this were 
impossible it would only remain to choose men 
for such posts who could and w^ould seek the 
preparation needed for their duties. I have 
known members of missionary boards who 
traveled widely and studied carefully in order 
to qualify themselves for their duties. I have 
known a dozen secretaries who could name 
every missionary connected with their society, 
and state with a fair degree of accuracy the 
condition of affairs in every separate mission 



124 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

station in which they had any special interest. 
In cases of this kind Christian devotion must 
do its work, as it does elsewhere. Those on 
whom responsibility rests at home must be as 
devoted as those w4io go abroad, and if they 
would serve their generation faithfully they 
must qualify themselves for their duties. It is 
a mournful fact that but few of our ministers 
are well informed in missionary matters, and, 
this being so, we need not wonder that more 
of our laymen do not study missionary litera- 
ture and keep abreast of the advancing host of 
missionary workers throughout the world. Let 
us hope that the days of remissness in this 
respect are past, and that better counsels will 
prevail among the leaders of this great move- 
ment in the future. 

THE WORK versus THE SOCIETY. 

Having thus briefly noticed a few points in 
connection with the supporting body and 
home management of missionary agencies, let 
me in the next place call attention to an impor- 
tant principle which should ever be kept in full 
view in the prosecution of the work. It is this : 
The missionary society exists for the work, and 
not the work for the society. The temptation 
to reverse the principle is often very strong, 
and to those who for long years become accus- 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 12 5 

tomed to the home perspective it must at times 
seem as if the interests of the society must in 
every case be paramount. To such persons it 
must seem Hke the case of a stream against its 
fountain, to put the mission above the society. 
The fountain is the source of supply, and the 
stream is so absolutely dependent upon its 
source that it seems entitled to the first con- 
sideration in every respect. But in this case 
the fountain has been created for the stream, 
and can only justify its existence by securing 
the welfare of the stream ; and hence, in the 
ordinary administration of the society's affairs, 
the work in the field should always be regarded 
as the paramount interest. This may possibly 
seem like a hard saying to many of those who 
are intrusted with the harassing cares and 
heavy burdens of the home management. 
Such persons are often sorely tried, are driven 
to their wits' ends in trying to find money 
enough for the remittances as they fall due, 
and it may seem not only ungracious but even 
unjust to remind them that their official 
interests are, and ever should be, secondary to 
the welfare of the work in foreign lands. They 
are struggling to maintain their society, to 
foster its resources, to replenish its treasury, 
and to them it must seem at times as if the 
very existence of the work abroad depended 



126 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

upon the success of their efforts. But just 
here the danger lies. In their zeal for the 
society the interests of the work may be sac- 
rificed. Take, for example, the case of an in- 
efficient or unsuitable missionary. The best 
interests of the work demand that he should 
retire to make way for a better worker, but the 
representative of the society objects that the 
presence of a returned missionary is dishearten- 
ing in its influence on the supporters of the 
work, that it lessens the collections, gives rise 
to evil surmises, and does harm in other ways. 
The word is passed along that the missionary 
in question must remain at his post, whether 
adapted to the work or not, and as a matter of 
fact such men have been known to be kept in 
the service thirty or forty years, not because 
they were doing a good work, but chiefly be- 
cause of the mistaken notion that the interests 
of the society required them to remain abroad. 
In the meantime better men are kept out of 
the field, and thousands of dollars are spent, if 
not wholly for naught, yet certainly without 
achieving the measure of success that might 
have been secured. This is only one of a class 
of illustrations which are very apt to occur 
in the administration of missionary affairs. 
As another illustration I may mention an 
attempt which was made to curtail the privi- 



MISSIONARY rOLITY. 12/ 

leges of a large number of missionaries for the 
avowed reason that it would simplify the ad- 
ministration in the home office and add some- 
what to the prerogatives of those in authority. 
In other words, the normal development of a 
group of foreign missions was held to be of less 
importance than the efficiency and convenience 
of an office in a distant city. Had the pro- 
posal succeeded, the result would probably 
have proved f^ital to a movement which has 
powerfully influenced some of the most success- 
ful missions in the world, and which bids fair 
to serve as an example to other prominent 
missions in different parts of the globe. 

LIMITATIONS OF AUTHORITY. 

These remarks may suggest the discussion 
of a broader question, affecting the whole rela- 
tion of the home management to the active 
work carried on in the mission field. To what 
extent should ii board, or a secretary, direct 
the missionaries in their work? What is the 
limit of their responsibility? What is the 
measure of their authority over the individual 
missionaries? How far, if at all, should the 
governing body of a missionary society exercise 
ecclesiastical functions ? 

These questions do not by any means receive 
uniform answers in all parts of the missionary 



128 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

world. In some cases ecclesiastical authority 
is used very freely in all matters, great and 
small, spiritual and secular. In other cases a 
clear distinction is recognized between the 
affairs of the Church and the mission. Then, 
again, under some missionary societies the 
authorities in the home office give minute 
directions in reference to all the details of the 
work, even in the most distant fields; in other 
cases a wise discretion is given to the men on 
the ground, and the general administration of 
the work is freely committed into their hands. 
It need hardly be said that the general tend- 
ency in all mission fields at the present day is 
in the direction of giving increased responsi- 
bility to the missionaries who are present on 
the scene of action, and who must, in the na- 
ture of the case, be best qualified to meet 
emergencies as they arise. The tendency, I 
say, is in this direction, but as yet only a very 
limited number of foreign missions enjoy that 
freedom of action which is necessary to insure 
the highest measure of success. In India, for 
example, in most missions the rule prevails 
that all important changes must receive the 
sanction of authorities on the opposite side of 
the globe ; and as this sanction can rarely be 
obtained without a delay of several months 
the hands of the missionaries are often tied at 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 1 29 

the very time when prompt and vigorous action 
IS imperatively demanded. This policy can 
only be defended as a temporary necessity in 
the early days of a mission; but when experi- 
enced leaders are in the field it is as absurd to 
require them to refer the disposition of the 
workers to parties in London or New York as 
it would be to compel a general on a battle- 
field to secure the approval of distant civil 
officers before making a change in the dispo- 
sition of the forces under his command. 

THE MISSIONARY COMMISSARIAT. 

The relation of a missionary society to a 
foreign mission is somewhat like that of a com- 
missariat department to an army in the field. 
No arm of the common service is more impor- 
tant, since not only the efficiency, but in most 
cases the very existence of the army depends 
on its successful management ; and yet no 
army is ever directed in its movements by the 
commissariat officers. It is the special duty of 
these officers to relieve those in command of 
active operations from the work and worry 
which always attend the providing of supplies 
for a great army, especially when actual war is 
in progress. This illustration does not, I know, 
hold good in all respects, but so far as the main 
principle is concerned it presents the case very 



130 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

fairly. It may, for instance, be said that the 
home authorities have a responsibility in the 
selection of workers, in sanctioning the expen- 
diture of funds, and in the general management 
of finances, quite unlike the duties of commis- 
sariat officers. This is very true, so far as these 
duties are concerned, but the main issue is not 
affected by the admission. The point of the 
illustration is, so far as active operations in the 
mission field are concerned, that men on one 
side of the globe cannot direct other men on 
the other side of the globe, and that while all 
belong to the same army, and have the same 
end in view, the special calling of the one party 
is to provide the sinews of war, and of the other 
to go forth to battle and become responsible 
for operations in the field. 

I do not, however, wish to be understood as 
objecting to the leaders of missionary societies 
assuming broader responsibility when occasion 
serves. One of the most urgent needs of the 
hour is missionary statesmanship, and nowhere 
is this need more urgent than in the councils 
of those who manage the affairs of the great 
missionary societies of the present day. It 
has often happened in history that men who 
could not command armies or sketch cam- 
paigns could yet see with the eye of genius 
where great campaigns could be fought, and 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 13I 

could lay their hands on men who could do 
tlie work which they themselves could not 
undertake. The elder Pitt was a statesman 
of this class. He saw a magnificent chance 
in North America to wrest a continent from a 
powerful enemy and give it to his own sover- 
eign. He selected General Wolfe, and sent 
him across the sea to undertake the desperate 
task ; and one of the turning points of the 
world's history was the result. The mission- 
ary world of the present day has crying need 
of statesmen of this class. The present is an 
age of opportunity. Nations and continents 
are to be won, and every leader may find a 
sphere of action if he seeks it. But it is not 
leadership to contend for the right to adminis- 
ter details in distant fields, or even to direct 
operations on a larger scale which belong le- 
gitimately to those who have created the 
work, who are present to meet emergencies as 
they arise, and who, in the order of God's 
providence, must bear the chief responsibility 
in coming years. 

PLANTING. 

Having thus noticed some features of the 
polity which should be adopted in the home 
management of missionary work, let us now 
look abroad and see how the case stands with 



132 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

those intrusted with the momentous respon- 
sibility of planting Christianity and Christian 
institutions in lands where Christ is not known. 
I have used the word ** planting '' advisedly. 
If anyone were to ask me to state a general 
rule or principle for the guidance of a young 
missionary I should answer in a single word, 
Plant. We hear much of sowing, and the 
term is scriptural enough ; but there is rea- 
son to fear that upon the lips of many it is 
used chiefly with reference to work which is 
not expected to produce any visible result. 
But surely no part of the parable of the sower 
was intended to teach any such lesson. The 
word ** plant '' is perhaps less liable to be mis- 
understood, since it always conveys the idea 
of something having life placed under condi- 
tions which will promote its growth. In the 
earlier years of my missionary service I was 
once struck by a remark made concerning a 
brother worker. *' Everything he has started,'' 
it was said, ** is still going on and doing a good 
work.'* The worker in question had learned 
the secret of putting vitality into his work and 
placing it under conditions which insured its 
growth and prosperity. Unfortunately, this is 
more than can be said of a great deal of the 
work done in mission fields. Some good men 
seem to be perfectly content to spend their 



MISSIONARY POLITY. I 33 

years in routine work, persuading themselves 
that they are sowing seed for future harvests ; 
but they estabh'sh nothing, they organize 
nothing, they plant nothing. The worker who 
can found a little village school and put it on 
a basis wdiich gives promise of permanency 
has learned the secret of planting in the mis- 
sionary sense of the word. The man who or- 
ganizes a little church is dealing with materi- 
als which bear the stamp of immortality upon 
them, and should aim to plant for all the years 
and ages to come. The band of missionaries 
who are associated together in a mission should 
make it their aim to create an organization 
which will live and grow through all coming 
time. They should remember that they can- 
not hope to remain forever at their posts, nor 
can Christians in the home land continue 
always to send out missionaries like themselves, 
and hence they should strive earnestly and 
constantly to plant, not only churches, but all 
manner of Christian institutions, in the country 
of their sojourn. 

In making appropriations this principle 
should be carefully recognized. Everything 
which gives promise of permanency should be 
generously fostered and encouraged. Wher- 
ever a school can be made self-supporting, 
that is, put in a position which will enable it 



134 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

to pay its own way in the future, it should at 
once be equipped for a career of permanent 
usefulness. Wherever a church can be made 
both selfsupporting and self-propagating it 
should at once be assisted to gain so desirable 
a position. Every mission field should be 
dotted over with living and growing agencies, 
firmly rooted in the soil and giving promise 
of indefinite years of useful service. 

ORGANIZATION. 

If life and growth are necessary to health- 
ful missionary work it must be remembered 
that organization is a law of both, and hence 
provision should always be made for effecting 
this at as early a day as possible, and for per- 
fecting it from time to time so as to keep pace 
with the progress of the work. There can be 
no doubt that this condition of healthful prog- 
ress has been greatly overlooked in the past. 
Many good men betray a certain kind of im- 
patience at the very mention of the word, 
thinking, very naturally too, that raw converts 
from heathenism cannot be prepared for the 
intricate duties and weighty responsibilities 
which are usually associated with the word 
** organization.'' But laws of growth must be 
respected, no matter what the intellectual plane 
of the parties concerned may be, and organiza- 



MISSIONARY POLITY. I 35 

tion should never be ignored in the mission field. 
It is much simpler and less inconvenient, no 
doubt, for the missionary to regard his converts 
as so many children, and to govern them pater- 
nally by a free exercise of personal authority ; 
but no missionary should ever venture to try an 
experiment of this kind. If the plan of organi- 
zation in use is too complex make it more sim- 
ple. At every hazard let the machinery em- 
ployed be made flexible enough to be adaptable 
to any and every contingency which may arise. 
Lay responsibility upon the people, and teach 
them how to share it among them. Let every 
little church be organized and drilled, and never, 
under any possible circumstances, let a Chris- 
tian community be left to drift about, the play 
of circumstances, or possibly the victim of pas- 
sions, with no provision made for adjusting 
differences or preserving peace. Blunders 
will occur, ludicrous and sometimes painful 
errors will be committed, but the fact remains 
unchanged that every healthy and growing 
body needs organization, and cannot prosper 
without it. 

I feel like adding one more word : In organ- 
izing let the work be done on broad lines. 
Without washing to discuss questions of eccle- 
siastical polity, I nevertheless cannot let the 
subject drop without saying that a mission in 



136 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

a non-Christian land is wonderfully strength- 
ened by holding a connection more or less 
direct with other missions of like character 
engaged in the same w^ork and laboring under 
similar conditions. Even where the Congre- 
gational form of government prevails a formal 
union of allied forces for missionary purposes 
cannot fail to exercise a profound and bene- 
ficial influence upon the workers and the work. 
It would be better, however, if the bond of 
union could be closer and more permanent. 
In the case of the field in which my own lot is 
now cast it has been found that a widespread 
organization, one that has assumed almost 
imperial proportions, has profoundly affected 
the mass of our Indian preachers, has inspired 
them with high ambition to do great things 
for God, and has impressed them with a deep 
conviction of the unspeakable responsibility 
which God has laid upon them. The non- 
Christian world is big enough, and the open 
fields are numerous enough, to afford ample 
scope for scores of great organizations aiming 
at the conversion of tens of millions, and pre- 
senting before the eyes of the young mission- 
ary fields of action far transcending, both in 
extent and in richness of opportunity, any 
other spheres of labor to be found on the 
globe. 



MISSIONARY POLITY. I 37 

AVOID A NARROW POLICY. 

In laying down a plan of operations in a 
foreign field care should be taken not to 
choose a policy too narrow for the free exer- 
cise of the varied gifts of a body of workers, 
or for the varied interests of the people who 
are expected to become Christians. It is not 
well, for instance, to make a mission exclu- 
sively educational, or exclusively evangelistic, 
or industrial, or medical. It is always w^ell 
enough for a missionary to be a man of one 
work, but that one work will inevitably be 
found to connect itself with a variety of inter- 
ests. Whatever belongs to the convert ought 
to be of interest to the missionary. The edu- 
cation of the children, the spiritual care of 
the parents, the creation of Christian homes, 
the removal of crushing debts, the uplifting of 
the people into a better social life, the promo- 
tion of a score of social and moral reforms — 
these and other kindred questions must con- 
cern every faithful missionary, and should be 
accepted without misgiving and without hesita- 
tion. A literature will have to be created for 
the people, education will of necessity rise 
from the most elementary beginnings to the 
level reached in Christian lands, rude industries 
will be found giving place to more advanced 



138 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

methods of manufacture and trade ; and in all 
these changes the missionary will be expected 
to be the helper, and to some extent the di- 
rector, of the people. He cannot afford to be 
a narrow man or to confine himself to a narrow 
line of work, and no attempt should be made 
to impose such a policy upon him. 

It is sometimes wise to send out workers for 
special classes, as, for instance, to the educated 
young men of the great cities in India, or to the 
women in zenanas ; but as a general rule it will 
be found best to instruct every missionary to go 
to the people to whom he finds most ready 
access. It does not matter very much what 
particular class he reaches, provided he finds 
access to masses of the people. One convert 
may prove more influential than another, but 
no country has ever been Christianized by 
gathering out from the mass a select few as 
converts and using them as connecting links 
between the missionary and the people at 
large. Christianity is emphatically the religion 
of the people, and if there is one thing we may 
do in absolute confidence and safety it is to 
go to willing masses of human beings any- 
where in the wide world and commend to 
them the religion of Jesus Christ. We may be 
led to the most common of the common people, 
but this matters nothing. Those who win the 



MISSIONARY POLITY. I 39 

common people will in the end win the nation. 
There is a wonderful power in the movements 
of great bodies of men. They may be lowly 
and even despised, but as they steadily move 
in a given direction other bodies of men not 
far removed from them in social position will 
begin to feel a similar impulse, and soon a de- 
cisive movement will be perceived, deepening 
and widening as it extends, and giving promise 
of continued progress for years and years to 
come. The missionary who shrinks from con- 
tact with the lowly multitude is not really pre- 
pared for wide success, and it may be accepted 
as certain beyond all peradventure that he will 
not achieve it. 

FOLLOW UP SUCCESS. 

It has often seemed to me that both the 
missionaries in the field and the authorities at 
home are prone to overlook the importance of 
following up, with all possible vigor, any marked 
success which is won. In this work, as in ac- 
tive warfare, a victory cannot be lightly thrown 
away. It must be followed up with all possi- 
ble energy and made to serve as the pathway 
to other and greater victories. If need be, other 
enterprises should be held in abeyance for a 
time and all possible forces brought to bear 
upon the point where the enemy is yielding 



I40 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

and his lines breaking. If this vast world of 
ours is ever to become a Christian world our 
militant hosts at the front must not only learn 
the meaning of the word victory, but they 
must learn how to win victories and grow 
familiar with the experience. Unfortunately, 
however, we do not always see this policy pur- 
sued. It is an extraordinary, and, I might add, 
an almost incredible, fact that it is often much 
more difficult to obtain aid for a work which 
is manifestly succeeding than for one which 
gives only a remote hope of final success. If a 
certain work is said to be very inexpensive 
the chances are very great that it will be re- 
garded as of little vakie. If, in like manner, it 
is said to be successful it is quietly assumed 
that it is in a prosperous condition and does 
not need help. On the other hand, when a 
large sum of money is asked for an enterprise 
which gives only a remote, and perhaps indi- 
rect, promise of success its value is rated at a 
high figure, and help is bestowed upon it with- 
out hesitation. 

We may in this way account for what often 
seems a strange anomaly in missionary adminis- 
tration ; but the explanation does not lessen 
the gravity of the error in question. The time 
has come for us carefully and prayerfully to 
consider what I shall venture to call the possi- 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 141 

bilities of victory. A single victory vigorously 
followed up can be made equal to ten other 
victories on the morrow of the day of battle. 
The less the expense the greater is the value of 
the work. The slender supply of barley loaves 
on a memorable occasion did not lessen the 
value of the great feast which made the occasion 
historical. Had a royal banquet been spread 
for the hungry people at great expense and 
with an immense amount of labor and trouble 
the event w^ould never have been heard of 
again. Strangely enough, we all learn most 
slowly our simplest lessons, and one of these 
lessons which God's militant people have as 
yet failed to master is that a victory on a 
mission field, promptly and vigorously followed 
up, is the most important and usually the 
least expensive work in which missionaries can 
engage. 

FAMILY AND NATIONAL LINES. 

In noting the progress of the work in India 
our missionaries in that country have repeatedly 
called attention to the importance of following 
caste and family lines. Society in India is so 
stratified, and family ties are so carefully recog- 
nized, that the missionaries find it well worth 
their while to take advantage of the influence 
which can often be gained through the attach- 
10 



142 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

ments of kindred or the respect of fellow-caste 
men. In doing this they no doubt act wisely, 
but the principle underlying their action has a 
much wider application. Beyond the family 
and the caste is the nation, and when we be- 
gin to build up new Church organizations it 
will be found not only the best, but in the 
end the only possible, policy to recognize na- 
tional ties and to build on national lines. This 
does not mean that there must be an absolute 
rupture of the ecclesiastical ties which bind 
Christians of different countries together, but 
in all that pertains to the administration of the 
affairs of the Church the principle of national 
autonomy should be fully recognized. This 
need not in the slightest degree interfere with 
the question of intercommunion. We may all 
remain members of one Church and yet have 
an ecclesiastical system so flexible that the 
framework of the Church shall be constructed 
on national lines and the people within the 
bounds of each nation or empire left at perfect 
liberty to move and act in harmony with the 
traditions and national instincts of the people. 
Every step in the direction of such a consum- 
mation is a step wisely taken, and we have 
now reached a stage in our missionary prog- 
ress where the general principle should be for- 
mally adopted and placed among the things 



MISSIONARY POLITY. 143 

which are settled beyond the need of further 
discussion. 

The subject chosen for this lecture is one 
which suggests so many practical questions 
and covers such broad ground that its discus- 
sion might be extended almost indefinitely; 
but suffice it to say, in conclusion, that mis- 
sionaries at the front should be given a wide 
discretion in the face of new emergencies, and 
that they should be courageous enough to ven- 
ture upon new courses of action when a clear 
case of emergency arises. But they should pa- 
tiently wait upon God, and never make haste 
to anticipate a new departure. A missionary 
in quest of an emergency is usually a danger- 
ous man. But, on the other hand, those who 
refuse to recognize changed conditions, who 
cannot perceive the hand of Providence, who 
pervert every temporary or local rule into a 
letter which killeth, become obstructive instead 
of helpful, and hinder growth instead of pro- 
moting it. As the great movement goes for- 
ward no doubt some very unlooked-for devel- 
opments will present themselves ; but we may 
well assure ourselves that God will keep men 
at the front who will prove equal to the de- 
mands of every crisis, and that no great 
disaster will be permitted to befall a cause 
around which cluster the best interests, not 



144 MISSIONARY POLITY. 

only of the Church of Christ, but of the hu- 
man race. 

The importance of giving more attention to 
questions of missionary poHty becomes the 
most apparent when we consider the immense 
expansion of all missionary interests, both at 
home and abroad, which may be anticipated 
with absolute certainty in the not very distant 
future. Many of those present in this audience 
will live to see missionary societies with an an- 
nual revenue of ten million dollars or more. 
They will live to see such societies each main- 
taining two or three thousand American mis- 
sionaries in foreign lands, with indigenous 
forces amounting to perhaps fifty thousand for 
each such great society. They will live to see 
the day when a million converts Avill be re- 
ported in a single year, and v/hen schools and 
colleges, hospitals and presses, and civilizing 
agencies of many kinds will be constantly 
springing into existence in all the ends of the 
earth. In the face of such startling contingen- 
cies we of the present day cannot afford to 
leave to our successors a careless, shortsighted 
policy of mere drift. God expects us to hold 
the helm as the bark which carries us moves 
on its way, and we should not only recognize 
our duty, but be keenly alive to all that such a 
comprehensive obligation implies. 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

THE modern missionary enterprise is both 
new and old. It is new in that it dates 
its origin only a century back ; and it is old in 
that it justly claims identity with the great 
work authorized by our Saviour and inaugu- 
rated by his apostles — the evangelization of all 
nations. It is, in fact, the resumption of a 
great work which had in a large measure been 
discontinued, and hence we very naturally turn 
to New Testament precedents when anxious to 
determine the best course to be pursued in the 
prosecution of the work at the present day. 
In all missionary discussions it is extremely 
common to hear appeals made to the prece- 
dents established by apostolic authority, or to 
the policy adopted throughout the Christian 
Churches of the world in the early days of Chris- 
tianity. Some of these appeals are wisely 
taken, but in other cases the precedents are 
not so clearly applicable to the present era. 
In some important respects primitive Chris- 
tianity occupied different ground, and was 
charged with a different mission from that in- 
trusted to the Church of the present day ; and 



148 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

in order clearly to understand how far we are 
to be governed by New Testament precedents, 
these points of difference must be carefully 
noted. 

First of all, we remember that while the 
Christians of the first century, like those of our 
day, had a full share in the commission to evan- 
gelize the world, they had a still higher com- 
mission, to inaugurate a new dispensation and 
to establish a new religion among men. They 
became the medium of a new revelation of 
God*s will to the race, and hence were privi- 
leged in some respects beyond any of the gen- 
erations which have succeeded them. The 
gift of miracles belongs to that era, for the sim- 
ple reason that the great work of completing 
God*s revelation had been committed to them. 
It is a great mistake to assume, as is so often 
done, that the power to work miracles belongs 
to the whole of the Old Testament dispensa- 
tion. So far from it, as far as the records show, 
it was only when one or more pages were to be 
added to God's revealed word, and notably 
when a higher dispensation was to be intro- 
duced, that the gift of miracles was freely be- 
stowed upon God's servants. Sometimes cen- 
turies elapsed without any display of such a 
gift. With the completion of the New Testa- 
ment this gift seems to have permanently dis- 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. I49 

appeared, and we have no reason to expect its 
reappearance. The supernatural remains, but 
the strictly miraculous no longer appears. The 
gift of prophecy in its New Testament sense 
remains, but the old prophets, who announced 
changes of dispensations and who added burn- 
ing pages to God's inspired word, will no more 
appear among men. No new religion is to be 
established, no new revelation given, no new dis- 
pensation ushered in, and hence we cannot ap- 
peal to any precedents which were dependent 
on the exceptional character of the apostolicage. 
I trust that no one will misunderstand me 
at this point. While maintaining that certain 
gifts do not belong to the present age, and that 
the peculiar mission of the first Christians was 
not only to propagate Christianity, but also to 
establish it as a living faith among men, I do 
not for a moment wish to intimate that we are 
less highly favored than the early Christians 
were, or that success in winning souls is a more 
difficult task than it was in the New Testament 
times. The two eras differ, but the balance of 
advantage is unquestionably with us of the 
present generation. No living man can repeat 
the miracles of Peter or Paul, but thousands 
can do greater things in pulling down Satan's 
stronghold and building up the kingdom of 
Christ among men. No living man can find a 



150 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

Patmos from which to gaze upon the sublime 
visions which John beheld, but thousands of 
modern disciples are so illuminated by the 
Spirit that the whole earth becomes their Pat- 
mos, and life is to them one long vision of the 
tearless and deathless world toward which they 
are journeying. We of the present day need 
no miracle-working power ; we need not even 
one additional page of revelation ; and we are 
fully equipped, so far as God*s provision is con- 
cerned, for whatever duties and responsibilities 
await us in life. 

But while we are careful to remember the 
points of difference between the first and the 
present era of Christianity, we may at the same 
time find many points of sameness between 
them, and I trust be able to draw some valu- 
able lessons from the first pioneers of evangeli- 
zation. Some features of the work in New 
Testament times must belong to a healthy con- 
dition of missionary work in all ages ; and a 
careful study of these special features cannot 
fail to supply us with timely lessons for the 
mission fields of the present day. 

ROMAN AND BRITISH EMPIRES. 

Before proceeding to notice those features 
of New Testament missions which most interest 
us at the present time, I wish briefly to call your 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. IJI 

attention to a remarkable providential develop- 
ment in the political world which corresponds in 
a striking manner to the influence of the Roman 
empire at the beginning of tlie Christian era. 
It has often been pointed out that, while 
steadily hostile to the new faith, the Roman 
power was on the whole favorable to the rapid 
and wide extension of the Christian religion. 
The general influence of such a power was 
favorable in many ways. It opened up wide 
regions which would otherwise have been un- 
known. It broke down barriers which would 
otherwise have been impassable ; it built great 
highways to connect the nations ; it gave the 
great Roman world a knowledge of two copious 
and flexible languages, one of which became 
the vehicle of political, and the other of reli- 
gious, ideas. It tolerated superstition, and yet 
dealt rude blows upon many superstitious no- 
tions. It prepared the way for a widespread 
movement such as the new religion was des- 
tined to become, and thus, even when bitterly 
persecuting Christianity, unconsciously pre- 
pared a way for it. 

The British empire is to one half the modern 
world what the Roman empire was to Europe 
and all the Mediterranean basin at the birth of 
Christianity. It covers three times as much 
territory and includes three times as many 



152 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

people as the Roman empire did in the time 
of its greatest power; but, unlike Rome, Eng- 
land has long since ceased to oppose the mis- 
sionary enterprise, and wherever her flag waves 
the Christian missionary feels secure beneath 
its folds. Nothing in the whole range of mod- 
ern history is more remarkable than the m.an- 
ner in which this great empire has grown up to 
its present colossal proportions, and no one w4io 
believes in the conversion of the human race 
can doubt that a wisdom higher than that of 
man and a power greater than that of human 
arms have planned its framework and raised it 
to its present commanding position, not only 
that it might become a great civilizing agency, 
but that it should especially prepare the way 
for a great missionary era. And not only is 
this great empire thus preparing the mission- 
ary's way, but nearly all the European powers 
are now beginning to take a part in a similar 
movement. It is true that no other power is 
so well fitted to deal with missionary interests, 
but we have now reached a point in the prog- 
ress of the world w^hen religious liberty may be 
regarded as the law of all nations pretending 
to maintain a high standard of civilization, and 
hence few, if any, European powers will here- 
after oppose the missionary movement. The 
extension of European power in Africa means, 



NEW TESTAMExXT MISSIONS. I 53 

for four fifths of the continent, rehgious liberty 
to the convert and personal protection to the 
missionary. We thus see the modern mission- 
ary placed in the enjoyment of the same po- 
litical advantages which the first Christians 
enjoyed, without the many serious hindrances 
which were inseparable from the presence of a 
hostile political power. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON DISPERSION. 

We are all acquainted with the extraordinary 
dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the 
Roman world at the time that Christianity 
began its outward movement. In every city 
was a Jewish coIony,and, although the majority 
of these people greeted the first missionaries 
with fierce opposition, yet none the less did 
the more worthy members of the community 
lend valuable aid in procuring them an audience 
and thus becoming a connecting link between 
the strangers and the heathen communities. 
No one can doubt that God*s hand directed 
the movement of these self-exiled Jews so as 
to make them serve an important purpose as 
intermediaries between the early Christians 
and the outer world. But if we see a provi- 
dence in this ancient dispersion of the Hebrew 
people, how much more ought we to recognize 
a divine purpose in the much more extraordi- 



154 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

nary dispersion of the English-speaking people 
throughout the whole world at the present 
time? Not only in the colonies and great de- 
pendencies of England, but in all other places, 
in every great city, in every newly opened 
region, along every civilized coast, in every 
great resort of pleasure, these people are found 
in constantly increasing numbers. In many 
places they do not lead lives which are helpful 
to the missionary, and not infrequently it 
happens that a feeling of hostility grows up 
between the missionaries and their secular 
neighbors. This is much to be regretted, and 
is by no means necessary in every case. The 
English-speaking communities can often be 
transformed into valuable auxiliaries to the 
missionary, and in every case their spiritual 
welfare should be sought with unquestioning 
earnestness. God has put them where they 
are, and they are not to be neglected. In our 
own work in India the limited attention be- 
stowed upon these people has been richly re- 
paid, and in other parts of the world it is nearly 
certain that like efforts would produce like 
results. It is certain that the Anglo-Saxon 
dispersion of the present day will go on increas- 
ing through the coming century; and since the 
influence of these people must tell for good or 
ill in every land, it should be accepted as a 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 55 

part of the general missionary work to be done 
that they should be sought out in every place 
and in every possible way, and not only brought 
to Christ, but transformed into missionary 
auxiliaries. In recognizing these people and 
in seeking their spiritual good we shall surely 
be following the example of the missionaries 
of the New Testament era, with a much better 
prospect of success than Barnabas and Saul 
enjoyed in their efforts for their countrymen 
while pursuing their great missionary work. 

SPIRITUAL STANDARD. 

Turning now to the more direct lessons 
which the modern missionary can learn from 
the workers of the New Testament era let us 
notice, first of all, the high spiritual standard 
which was not only set up in the beginning, 
but maintained throughout at least the age of 
the apostles and their associates. I do not 
refer to the miraculous element in any of its 
manifestations, but rather to the presence of 
an active spiritual life in the several churches, 
a life so distinct from any other animating 
principle known in the society of that day as 
to impress those who were brought under its 
influence with a conviction of its divine origin. 
This life was nothing less than the presence 
of the Holy Spirit, dwelling in his fullness in 



156 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

believing hearts, and creating those outward 
manifestations which mark out vital Christian- 
ity as distinct from all other religious sys- 
tems and forms known among men. It was 
the vital element in Pentecost reproduced in 
other places, and so exhibited to the body of 
believers everywhere as to indicate God's plan 
and purpose to make his Church, in all places 
and all ages, a reproduction of the living and 
energetic Church of the original Pentecost. 
I do not mean that every church organized by 
Paul and his associates was an exact copy of 
the first organization in Jerusalem previous to 
the death of Stephen ; but it would seem that 
in every place the standard set up was that of 
the original Pentecost. In the house of Cor- 
nelius at Ephesus, and even in Samaria, we 
have circumstantial accounts of the descent 
of the Spirit upon believers in the pentecostal 
measure, and from a hundred incidental re- 
marks it becomes perfectly clear that this 
spiritual standard was well known everywhere, 
and recognized as the ordinary privilege as 
well as the rule of life to be adopted by the 
whole body of Christian workers. In many 
places a much lower standard was no doubt 
tolerated, but the better rule was well known, 
and no doubt illustrated in the lives and la- 
bors of multitudes of the early Christians. 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. I 57 

The modern missionary should be not 
merely a pious and devoted man, but one who 
has the ** spiritual mind/' who walks in the 
Spirit, and not only teaches correct doctrine 
concerning the person and offices of the Holy 
Ghost, but has proved in his own person that 
living mortals can and do become the temples 
of the living God. The standing miracle of 
Christianity is the presence of the Holy Spirit 
in the hearts of believers. The missionary who 
has ceased to expect the reappearance of the 
old-time miracles is the last man living to 
venture to dispense with this gift of the 
Spirit, which makes life one long miracle and 
clothes the believer with privileges and powers 
which pertain not merely to the miraculous 
but even to the divine. The world can recog- 
nize the presence of a hidden power in the 
possessor of such a gift, and it was this indwell- 
ing Spirit of whom Jesus spoke when he 
promised that special power should be given 
to those of all ages who should become his 
accredited witnesses. 

VIVIFYING LIFELESS COMMUNITIES. 

In the modern mission field it often happens 

that a large Christian community is found 

apparently destitute, or almost destitute, of 

all manifestations of spiritual life. Those who 

11 



158 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

have to deal with such communities are often 
discouraged and distressed because all their 
efforts to lift them to a higher plane seem to 
fail. In such cases regret is often expressed 
that such unworthy persons were ever bap- 
tized. All efforts to do them good seemed to 
prove fruitless. What is to be done in such 
cases? There is hope in every such case if 
only what I might call a little Pentecost can 
be introduced at some one point among the 
people. The average standard may be de- 
plorably low, but if the New Testament stand- 
ard is also there the condition of such a 
community is by no means hopeless. Just at 
this point we find the secret of the extraordi- 
nary power of the early Christian leaders. 
Some of the communities were deplorably 
imperfect, but none of them were wholly 
formal. An element of life was found every- 
where, and this made it possible to contend 
against evil and to lead the people into a bet- 
ter and more spiritual life. 

So far as Christian history teaches us there 
is only one way of introducing this spiritual 
life into a community. It must be done by 
living messengers of Christ. The modern 
missionary, like those of the first generation, 
should be anointed for this work, and should 
know by a personal experience v.hat the in- 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. I 59 

dwelling of the Spirit in the heart really means. 
He is one of those who must ever be like a 
city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. 
Hundreds and thousands will watch him and 
imitate him. He can stand upon his height and 
beckon to those below to come up to him, but 
he cannot stand below and induce anyone to 
go up alone. The standard of Barnabas and 
Paul, of Peter and John, should be his stand- 
ard. The world can never be made either to 
fear or respect a lower one. If he will walk in 
the Spirit, be clothed with the power of the 
Spirit, and demonstrate by the example of a 
quiet, simple, and holy life that he lives in 
touch with the invisible world, and that he is 
endued with a strength which is more than 
mortal, men and women w^ill be arrested by 
his words and led by him into the light and 
freedom of a new and better life. The mission 
fields of to-day need this New Testament 
standard of spiritual life and power. The 
Churches of Christendom need it, and the hope 
of the future is dependent upon its recognition 
and acceptance everywhere. 

THE CALL TO SERVICE. 

Another lesson can be learned in the study 
of primitive missions by observing the general 
character of the w^orkers employed. I have 



l6o NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

spoken of their spiritual equipment, but they 
possessed other quaHfications which pecuh'arly 
fitted them for their work. Foremost among 
these I would put the call to service which 
they received. This w^ould seem to have been 
as clear and unmistakable as the prior call to 
discipleship. It is strikingly illustrated in the 
case of Barnabas and Paul at Antioch, but not 
in that instance alone. The Book of Acts 
abounds in illustrations of the fact that the 
call and guidance of the Spirit were similarly 
recognized in the apostolic days, not only in 
w^hat might be called missionary work, but 
in every department of Christian labor and 
duty. Nor was this dependence upon the 
Holy Spirit intended to be an exceptional 
privilege of that exceptional age. God still 
calls and sends forth his messengers, and the 
modern missionary of all men should be a man 
sent from God. He should go to his distant 
field with a clear and settled conviction that he 
is a messenger of God, an ambassador of Jesus 
Christ, and that he has no more right to diso- 
bey his calling than he has to wreck his soul 
by abandoning the service of God and going 
into the ways of sin and death. 

There is a twofold danger to be guarded 
against at this point. On the one hand, 
3ome who are called of God to missionary 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. l6l 

service may close their ears to the divine voice 
and shut their eyes to the divine tokens by 
which they would otherwise be guided into the 
mission field. On the other hand, there is a 
growing impression among a certain class of 
young men that in at least some mission fields 
a comfortable domestic life, and a not very 
exacting service, awaits the missionary; and 
the work is accepted as upon the whole more 
desirable than a home pastorate, especially 
with its uncertainties in the case of those 
whose pulpit gifts are moderate. May the 
God of all mercies forever spare us from the 
presence of men and women who are induced 
to enter the foreign field from such considera- 
tions as these ! A perfunctory missionary, one 
who performs a certain routine of duty because 
it chances to fall to his lot, but whose soul is 
stirred by no sense of a hallowed call to duty, 
whose heart glows with no love for the work 
assigned to him, whose ear is deaf to the Spirit's 
whispers, and whose eye is blind to the sweet 
tokens by which our loving Father so often 
guides his children, is out of place in the mis. 
sion field, and in many cases his influence will 
be found adverse to the best interests of the 
work. He may be a good man, in the ordi- 
nary sense of the word good, but he is out of 
place, and, however little he may intend it, he 



l62 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

■^ 
will often be found to fail in times of peculiar 
peril, and thus bring lasting injury to the cause 
which he is expected to serve. 

MEN OF THE PEOPLE. 

It is further worthy of note that the mission- 
aries of the New Testament era were men 
of the people. They were accused by their 
enemies of being ^^ ignorant and unlearned ; *' 
but this does not seem to have been true in 
any proper sense of the words employed. 
They were not professional teachers of re- 
ligion ; they had not studied in the professional 
schools of the day ; they did not conform to 
the popular standards observed by the religious 
conventionalism of that age ; but they fully 
and faithfully represented the mass of the 
people among whom they lived, and in doing 
so illustrated one of the most important 
qualifications which a missionary can possess. 
The missionary who leaves his native land to 
become a dweller among a people who are 
alien to him both by race and language, must 
at best labor under a great disadvantage in 
this respect ; but he can do much to lessen it. 
During my first year in India a friend said to 
me, ** If you want to enjoy the confidence of 
these people you must learn to give the soft 
sound to your t's and d's." His meaning was 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 163 

that I must not only learn their language, but 
learn to speak it as they did, and especially to 
avoid those peculiarities which mark the 
speech of foreigners. Every missionary should 
study not only to master the language of the 
people among whom he lives, but to enter 
into their life, to acquaint himself with their 
works of thought, their social organization, 
their fears and prejudices, their likes and dis- 
likes, and above all to enter into their sym- 
pathies and make their interests his own. 

But the New Testament does not reveal to 
us the character and work of what we call the 
foreign missionary so much as that of the men 
raised up in the field, or, to borrow a modern 
term, of the ** native preachers.'* So far as can be 
gleaned from the very brief record of the times 
it would seem that these men were, in the 
main, representatives of the common people. 
They belonged to no priestly order, they repre- 
sented no caste, they were pupils of no school 
of philosophy, science, or religion. They were 
inducted into their work in the most informal 
manner. So far as can be learned it would 
seem that they simply grew into it, and when 
a special post of duty was vacant a man who 
had already proved his fitness for the duties 
required was put into the vacant post. 

In every mission field to-day there is a cry for 



164 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

** a native ministry/* This is perfectly intelligi- 
ble and reasonable. Aliens and strangers can- 
not permanently be kept in charge of a work 
which must sooner or later move forward on 
national lines. But I am every year becoming 
more impressed that very many friends of mis- 
sions have a very wrong ideal before their 
minds when thej^ talk of a native ministry. 
They are thinking of an imitation of the min- 
istry they have known in the home land, and 
are forgetting that a ministry adapted to the 
people must be of the people, and hence be 
kept in touch with the people. It is very easy 
to take young men from the ranks of the com- 
mon people, and so train them that in the 
course of a few years they w^ill become per- 
manently separated from the community in 
which they were born and brought up. The 
priest, as a general rule, receives this kind of 
training ; but the prophet ceases to be a 
prophet the moment he allows himself to be- 
come isolated from the mass of his fellowmen. 
When we talk of training men for the minis- 
try we are apt to forget that the word ^^ train- 
ing '' is a very flexible term. In one case it 
has one meaning, and in another case another 
and very different meaning. A young man may 
be thoroughly drilled in Hebrew and Greek, 
in theology and philosophy, in logic and rhet- 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 65 

one, in literature and science, and yet not 
know how to preach or even have an intelligent 
idea of what preaching really means. He is 
trained, but not to do the work of a preacher. 
Other men who occupy pulpits, and who per- 
haps have acquired fame as preachers, can dis- 
course eloquently in the pulpit, but they cannot 
preach. They do not know what it is to receive 
a message from God to be delivered to men ; 
they do not understand what is meant by the 
anointing of the Spirit, and they do not ex- 
pect to be owned of God in the conversion of 
sinners or in the overthrow of wickedness. 
They are pulpit orators, but not anointed 
preachers. They are gifted men, but have been 
badly trained. This could never have been said 
of either the leaders or the general body of the 
workers in New Testament times. The mis- 
sionaries of the period were men who knew 
their work, whatever else they did not know ; 
and in the mission fields of to-day the lesson 
which their example teaches should not be 
overlooked. 

MEETING AN EMERGENCY. 

In recent years our own missionaries in In- 
dia have been brought face to face with this 
question under somewhat extraordinary cir- 
cumstances. At a time when every native 



l66 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

preacher and teacher was already fully em- 
ployed, a large influx of utterly untaught new 
converts began to appear on the scene. These 
converts required teaching, and could not be 
neglected. To leave them untaught would 
have been tantamount to insuring their early 
defection from the Christian ranks. Trained 
workers there were absolutely none. One ap- 
parently desperate expedient presented itself, 
and this was quickly and resolutely adopted. 
A selection from the ranks of the raw con- 
verts was made, and a number of men were 
set apart to be trained in the work. Many 
objections could easily have been made to this 
course, but what other course was open to the 
perplexed and anxious missionaries ? The ex- 
periment was tried, and while the result has 
not been altogether satisfactory, it has yet 
been infinitely better than failure. At the 
present time several hundred of these almost 
illiterate men are successfully worlcing for God 
among a class of their countrymen belonging 
to their own social rank, and peculiarly acces- 
sible to teachers who were not long ago their 
own neighbors and associates. When speaking 
of these men and their present responsibilities, 
I am often struck by the surprise and even 
alarm which many good people manifest as 
they hear of men who can barely read doing 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 67 

the work of Christian preachers. Very many 
seem ahiiost shocked at the mere mention of 
such a thing, and make no hesitation in pre- 
dicting failure, if not, indeed, worse than failure, 
as the sure result of so unwise a course. But, 
after all, are these men necessarily so very un- 
fit for their work? They do not know much 
which is taught in the theological schools, but 
they do know their own people ; they know 
their range of thought, the peculiar character 
of their religious notions, the prejudices and 
fears which oppress them, the dangers which 
lie across their pathway, and the sins which 
most easily beset them. They can interpret 
new ideas to the people as no outsider can, 
and they can influence and lead the people as 
no other living man can do. If the test of fit- 
ness for the work is success in work, then these 
men may well present very fair credentials as 
accredited laborers in the vineyard of their 
Master. 

It IS a striking comment on the ease with 
which men may be educated above their work, 
that already we find young preachers in India 
who shrink from visiting their own relatives. 
They have started out from the lowest social 
level, hftve become educated, and in a measure 
refined, have gained recognition in the social 
world from persons of high standing ; and now 



l68 NEW TESTAMENT MISStONS. 

they do not wish to be seen among their own 
kindred or perhaps to cross the threshold of 
the mud-walled hut in which they were born 
and reared. You need not, it is true, go to 
far-off India to find illustrations of this kind. 
The ineffable meanness which makes men and 
women hide themselves from their own flesh 
very often displays itself in fashionable society ; 
but it is nowhere so utterly out of place as 
when seen in the case of a Christian preacher, 
and it is a startling fact that this unmanly 
pride is sometimes the result of a supposed 
*^ training*' for the Christian ministry. This 
result does not always, or even often, oc- 
cur, but the lesson to be learned is none the 
less important. Even where the preacher 
does not demean himself to this extent, it too 
often happens, in both home and foreign fields, 
that he becomes wholly unfitted for successful 
work among the people to whom he himself 
belongs, and becomes as permanently separated 
from them as if they lived on another planet. 

CHANGED CONDITIONS. 

From the workers let us now pass on to 
consider the work of the missionary in those 
far-off New Testament days. Modern educa- 
tion, with all that the term implies, had not 
then been dreamed of, and hence there was 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 69 

no educational work in the popular sense of 
the word. No schoolhouses had to be built, 
no text-books prepared, no manuals, maps, or 
school apparatus of any kind had to be pro- 
vided. The Sunday school had not yet been 
born. The printing press was unknown. The 
civilization of the field of operations was the 
highest and best on the globe, and the mis- 
sionaries had neither the knowledge nor the 
skill, even if they had possessed the inclination, 
to introduce industrial enterprises or to teach 
their converts the elements of a new civiliza- 
tion. In short, the work in those days was 
confined within very narrow bounds, and can 
be easily defined. It w^as simply the task of 
inducing men and women to accept Jesus 
Christ as a personal Saviour, and then teaching 
them carefully how to walk in the good way 
and accomplish the righteous will of God. In 
other words, the early disciples devoted them- 
selves to making converts, organizing churches, 
and building up the body of believers in the 
most holy faith of the Gospel. 

One feature of this work demands our spe- 
cial attention. While it is true that no school- 
master was to be found among the mission- 
aries, the teacher, in the New Testament sense 
of the word, was found everywhere, and on 
him rested a very grave responsibility. Teach- 



I/O NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

ing was one of the permanent gifts bestowed 
upon the Church at Pentecost, and its exercise 
is absolutely necessary to the healthy develop- 
ment of every Christian community. In the 
apostolic day we read of this work being done 
from house to house and being extended to 
every man. There is a kind of personal in- 
struction which can only be done by personal 
contact of man with man. No course of lec- 
tures, no Bible lessons, no catechetical instruc- 
tions can take the place of it. God has from 
the beginning made special provision for the 
preservation and exercise of this gift in the 
Church, but, like other gifts more precious than 
gold that perisheth, it has for the most part 
been sadly neglected in the past. Where it 
has been recognized and honored it has uni- 
formly proved unspeakably valuable, especially 
to converts in the early days of their service. 
Its neglect in most cases by the modern Church 
is simply amazing, and, in the face of the ample 
provision which God has made for its exercise 
and the clear expression of his will concerning 
this neglect, seems little short of criminal. 

THE TEACHERS OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES. 

The missionaries of our day would do well 
to consider carefully the practical bearings 
of this subject. Wherever converts begin 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 171 

to be numbered by the thousand, the de- 
mand for the anointed teacher after the 
New Testament pattern becomes exceed- 
ingly urgent. The teacher in the schoohoom 
has his work, and it is most important; but 
this is not the kind of work to which 1 refer. 
The pastor has his duties, and very often the 
gift to teach is found among the other gifts 
which a faithful pastor receives. But all the 
school-teachers and pastors combined cannot 
meet the demand for spiritual instruction 
which must arise when large numbers of 
people begin to turn from idols to the living 
God. They must be taught how to pray, how 
to sing God's praises, how to believe, how to 
order a Christian household, the nature of 
temptation and how to resist it, how to deal 
with the erring, how to seek the wanderer, and 
how, by careful living, to adorn the Christian 
life in this world and prepare for life with God 
in the world to come. These converts at the 
outset know almost nothing, and it is only by 
line upon line and precept upon precept that 
they can be kept in the right way and led to 
consistent lives spent in the service of God. 

The exigencies of our work in India during 
the past few years have compelled me to think 
much on this subject. All our missionaries 
and native preachers and teachers combined 



1/2 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

cannot successfully impart this kind of teaching 
to the multitudes who are flocking around us, 
and those who understand the situation best 
are at times almost appalled by the daily in- 
creasing magnitude of the problem which con- 
fronts us. 

In this emergency we can find most light by 
the example of the Christians of the New 
Testament era. The gift of teaching was not 
confined to a select few, and probably was be- 
stowed upon very considerable numbers of the 
people. It is more than probable that w^hile 
the great distinctive truths of the new faith 
were announced in public discourses, the de- 
tails, both of doctrine and of practice, were 
left to the large number of anointed teachers 
who were raised up for this special work by the 
direct setting apart of the Holy Spirit. Even 
in our day we may often see illustrations of 
this kind of service in Christian lands, espe- 
cially in connection with revival movements. 
Men and women who occupy no official posi- 
tions, and lay claim to no special aptitude for 
Christian work, are often successful to a re- 
markable degree in helping inquirers and con- 
verts over their difficulties, and in making 
straight the many crooked places which such 
beginners always meet at the outset of their 
new life. If it be said that as a general rule 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 73 

such gifted persons are not often met with in 
modern congregations, it may suffice to reply 
that God usually bestows his gifts upon those 
who seek them, and especially upon those who 
are worthy to receive them. Let the want be 
recognized, and God*s provision for its supply 
duly appreciated, and we may confidently ex- 
pect this New Testament gift to reappear in 
our modern Christian circles as certainly, and 
in as full measure, as in apostolic times. If 
this can be successfully done in the case of a 
great movement like that which is now taking 
place in India, it will add immeasurably to the 
possibilities of the missionary world. If the 
common believers, or any considerable number 
of them, can be enlisted in the blessed service 
of caring for poor feeble converts, and halting, 
doubting inquirers, meeting them all as they 
come, and directing their first efforts to adopt 
the Christian faith and the Christian life, it will 
become possible for us to receive thousands and 
tens of thousands of the people without fear 
of any adverse consequences to the Christian 
community or any danger to the converts 
themselves. 

PRESENT-DAY CONVERTS. 

This last remark suggests another topic. 
What is the general character of modern con- 
13 



174 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

verts, especially as compared with those of the 
early Church? Do the present-day con- 
verts come up to the New Testament standard, 
even in a moderate degree ? Do not mission- 
aries themselves mourn over their low spiritual 
state ? And is it not perfectly evident that the 
best of them can hardly be named in the same 
connection with the noble communities of 
devoted Christian men and women who were 
raised up under the preaching of the apostles 
and their associates? 

Before attempting to answer these questions, 
I must beg to be allowed to say a few words 
about the moral and spiritual status of the first 
Christians. The popular idea undoubtedly is 
that the first generation of Christians presented 
beyond question the best type of Christian life 
and character which the world has yet seen ; 
but there can be little doubt that the popular 
impression on this subject is wholly a mistaken 
one. In the first place, we must remember that 
for some years the first Christians strictly main- 
tained their adherence to the laws and customs 
of Judaism. No Brahman of the present day 
is more scrupulous in observing the rules of his 
caste than were the first saints at Jerusalem in 
conforming to laws and prejudices which would 
not now be tolerated in any Christian Church 
in the world. In the next place, the standard 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 75 

of moral conduct which was ofificially adopted 
at the suggestion of James, when presiding 
over the council at Jerusalem, was by no means 
a high standard, and the exactions which it 
demanded of the Gentile converts were of the 
lightest character. In the brief list of restric- 
tions mentioned by James on that memorable 
occasion we find no reference to Sabbath ob- 
servance, either Jewish or Christian. Gross 
sin and repulsive food were forbidden, but no 
mention was made of various matters which 
are now considered of the utmost importance. 
It is evident, too, that the average Christians of 
that day had a very fair share of the infirmities 
which so often disfigure the lives of our modern 
Christians. The pure and holy men and women 
of whom we hear the most were not in the ma- 
jority, but, as always happens in our world, the 
lives of the preeminently good have survived 
in history, while the unworthy have been for- 
gotten. 

The modern convert is not always an exem- 
plary man, but some exemplary men may be 
found in every community of converts. Some — 
I am thankful to be able to say many — are 
more than exemplary ; they are holy in life, 
devoted in spirit, and full of zeal for God and 
immortal souls. The leaven of moral and spir- 
itual progress is at work in these communities, 



176 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

and if the converts are not all model Chris- 
tians, they are at least steadily improving in 
the elements which make up a good Christian 
character. It is quite common to find among 
them a hankering after former practices, and 
the modern missionary often has to repeat the 
admonition of John to his spiritual children, to 
keep themselves from idols. Some Christian 
duties are learned slowly and observed very 
imperfectly. Chief among these is the law of 
Sabbath rest. Unlike most of the other com- 
mandments of the Decalogue, the obligation 
of the Sabbath is wholly dependent on a spe- 
cial commandment. It is not written on the 
heart by the Spirit previous to hearing the 
commandment. Every idolater know^s that it 
is wrong to kill, steal, bear false witness, com- 
mit adultery, covet, or dishonor parents ; but 
no one knov/s until taught that it is a duty to 
keep every seventh day holy. The natural re- 
sult is that most converts, especially those who 
live in the midst of vast non-Christian com- 
munities, learn the duty of Sabbath observ- 
ance very slowly, and it is more than prob- 
able that in this respect they are walking in 
the footsteps of the early Christians. During 
a whole generation of the first converts the 
practice of Sabbath observance was by no means 
uniform. Some observed Saturday and others 



NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 7/ 

Sunday, while others again observed both 
days. The majority were either slaves or per- 
sons so connected with non-Christian parties 
as to be under a measure of compulsion, and 
hence no attempt was made by them to ob- 
serve any day. For many years to come a 
similar laxity must be tolerated in non-Chris- 
tian countries. Millions are so bound to the 
soil, or so obligated to the village communi- 
ties that they are not at liberty, and for many 
long years will not be at liberty, to conform to 
outward rules of living which have been uni- 
versally recognized in Christian lands for many 
long centuries. 

In all discussions of this kind w^e should re- 
member that mere conventionalism is often 
confounded with Christianity. In England and 
America certain notions prevail with reference 
to public worship which seem inseparable from 
Christianity itself, but which in fact have very 
little to do w^ith it. Usage quickly gives sanc- 
tity to a mere custom which chances to be as- 
sociated with religion ; and it thus happens that 
recent converts from heathenism are often 
judged severely for their ignorance of Chris- 
tianity when, as a matter of fact, they are only 
ignorant of the religious conventionalities of 
the day. An ordinary Sunday service in a 
fashionable modern church bears but a very 



178 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 

slight resemblance to the Lord's Day worship 
of the Christians of the first century. The 
average converts in India and China have many 
things to learn from their English and Ameri- 
can brethren ; but there are some things which 
they might profitably teach these same breth- 
ren, and thereby minister, in some little de- 
gree at least, to their edification. 

FLEXIBLE ORGANIZATION. 

In conclusion, let me call your attention to 
the fact that in the missions of the New Testa- 
ment era the law of normal progress was al- 
lowed to have free progress, and the rule of 
one day did not necessarily become the law of 
all succeeding days. The work was always re- 
garded as greater than the methods, and the 
leaders advanced step by step as the provi- 
dential indications of the time pointed out the 
way. The missionaries of the present day 
must do likewise. Some things cannot be 
changed, for the simple reason that they are 
forever right ; but in a multitude of other mat- 
ters the law of Christian liberty must be rec- 
ognized to its fullest extent. The Christian 
workers of the world have learned much, but 
as the ages pass by other lessons will have 
to be learned and other methods introduced 
in the ever-multiplying fields throughout the 



f^EW TESTAMENT MlSSfONS. i^g 

world. We should thank God for the many 
New Testament precedents which are guiding 
us to-day ; but among them all no one is more 
to be prized than the conspicuous liberty which 
was given to adopt new methods in the face of 
new emergencies. In this liberty all Christian 
workers should be careful to stand fast. 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

IT has fallen to my lot during recent years to 
be, not exactly a wanderer on the face of 
the earth, and yet one who is familiar with the 
full meaning of the phrase, **In journeyings 
oft/* From January to December there is no 
respite from the calls which come to me from 
both sides of the globe, although happily there 
is abundant variety in the path along which I 
pursue my way, with new scenes constantly 
presenting themselves to the view and new 
lessons constantly impressing themselves on 
both mind and heart. Many of the impres- 
sions thus made are abiding. A brief glimpse 
of a peculiar situation, or of special features 
pertaining to an otherwise ordinary work which 
a hurried wayfarer may sometimes catch on 
his journey, is often of unspeakable value in 
after years. 

Thirty-six years ago this present month I 
left my native land to become a foreign mis- 
sionary, and in the course of the long years 
which have since passed I have had many op- 
portunities for observing various features of 



184 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

the work both at home and abroad, and very 
naturally have become deeply impressed by 
much of what I have seen and heard, especially 
in recent years. Instead of selecting a special 
subject for this closing lecture of the series, it 
has occurred to me that it might be well to 
call your attention to a few of these wayside 
views, that is, to observations constantly made 
in the ordinary course of my missionary life. 

MISSIONARY DEVOTION. 

First, and perhaps most important of all, I 
may say that the experience of each succeed- 
ing year has impressed me more and more with 
the importance of maintaining a high standard 
of missionary devotion, both in the Church at 
home and among the missionaries abroad. I 
do not wish to reflect in the faintest measure 
on missionaries who have, for reasons sufficient 
to themselves, permanently returned to their 
native land. In the very nature of the case it 
must often happen that good and devoted men 
and women will be obliged to change their 
plans for life, and we may easily conceive of 
circumstances under which it becomes as clearly 
one's duty to give up the foreign field as it 
seemed in the first place to accept the call to 
it. Still, I have often been unable to conceal 
from myself the fact that many who bear the 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. I 85 

title of missionary fail to understand the full 
meaning of devotion to the country or the 
work to which they are sent. Such lack of de- 
votion may be found in the field as well as out 
of it ; and it sometimes happens that the man 
and wife who sorrowfully turn their footsteps 
homeward have more real love and devotion to 
its interests than another couple who content- 
edly remain at their post of duty. 

In any ordinary mission field a class of work- 
ers will be found who, not in name merely, but 
in very deed, belong to the country to which 
they have been sent. They make its interests 
their own, and they have no interests of their 
own apart from the work to which they have 
given their lives. They may be depended upon 
in all possible circumstances. The value of 
such workers is beyond all price. Devotion in 
the case of such persons has a practical mean- 
ing, which constantly reminds us of the quality 
of that virtue as represented in the New Testa- 
ment. There may be a great deal of religious 
feeling, and the recognition of a very high 
ideal, without a practical manifestation of 
Christian devotion in the New Testament sense 
of the word. In the mission field abroad we 
feel the need of men and women who belong 
to the country of their adoption — men and 
women who live for the v/ork to which they 



1 86 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

profess to have given their hves, and who are 
prepared to sacrifice any interest, including life 
itself, if their work seems to demand it. Such 
persons do not live in a country merely — they 
are wedded to it, they live for it, and would 
count it a privilege rather than a misfortune 
to be permitted to find their graves beneath its 
soil. 

It happens, perhaps, to every missionary 
during the earlier years of his service that he 
encounters temptations to leave his work and 
accept inviting positions in his native land. 
These temptations sometimes become the more 
alluring because connected with positions in 
which he will still seem to be serving the cause 
which he has at heart, or his private affairs may 
become so complicated that, under the circum- 
stances in which he is placed, a return to his 
native land will seem to him justifiable. If all 
missionaries, especially those who possess gifts 
which would fit them for service at home, were 
to speak frankly they would tell of periods in 
their lives when they have encountered such 
temptations, and perhaps have only overcome 
them after a struggle ; and it is perhaps owing 
to the fact that all do not succeed in putting 
the temptation behind them that, from time to 
time, men well adapted to the service are al- 
lured away. I need hardly say that in nearly 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 1 8/ 

every such case one of the greatest possible 
mistakes which a man can make is committed, 
and every young missionary who goes abroad 
should settle the question in his heart that 
nothing but a call as imperative as that which 
puts him in the work shall ever turn him out 
of it. When he accepts the call he should de- 
vote himself so unquestioningly to the cause to 
which he gives his life that it will be useless 
for man or devil to try to entice him away from 
his post of duty. 

SEPARATION FROM CHILDREN. 

There is one phase of missionary life which 
in hundreds of cases puts this devotion to a 
test of unusual severity, and makes the tempta- 
tion something more than can be expressed in 
ordinary language. In nearly all tropical mis- 
sion fields it is found necessary for the best in- 
terests of the children of missionaries that they 
be sent back to the home land of their parents, 
not only to secure the advantages of an or- 
dinary education, but also to develop their 
physical strength and enable them to reap the 
many advantages which are secured from grow- 
ing up in the midst of an intelligent Christian 
community. Daily contact with the unfavor- 
able associations in the midst of which they are 
placed in a non-Christian land can hardly be 



1 88 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

otherwise than hurtful, even though the moral 
and religious character of the child be carefully- 
guarded by the most watchful of parents. In 
some cases, under exceptional circumstances, 
children have grown up in these tropical fields 
without seriously deteriorating in their health 
or morals ; but, as a general rule, parents who 
wish to secure the highest possible advantages 
for their children — and all Christian parents 
should so wish — will feel it well, sooner or 
later, to send those who are as dear to them as 
life itself to the other side of the globe for a 
separation which sometimes lasts for many long 
and weary years. When we speak of mission- 
ary trials, this is perhaps the most severe that 
can be named. To the children themselves it 
often seems morally wrong to banish them 
thus from what to them seems home. Many 
good people in England and America are led 
to question the wisdom of this course. Not 
understanding the peculiar circumstances of the 
case they hastily assume the ground that 
wherever parents live children ought to live, 
and that if the young people grow up in the 
land of their adoption they will be the better 
fitted for usefulness among the people for whom 
they should labor after their parents have gone 
to their reward. That view will do ideally, but 
in practical life it will fail in nine cases out of 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 1 89 

ten. Missionary parents, no more than other 
parents, can decide in advance whether their 
children will be adapted for the work in which 
they themselves are engaged. The children 
may have no taste or aptitude for such work, 
and even if they do it may not follow that 
spending childhood and youth in the midst of 
such associations is the best way for qualifying 
them for the highest usefulness in coming 
years. Very many missionaries find themselves 
sooner or later brought face to face with our 
Saviour's seemingly harsh condition, that those 
who would follow him obediently as disciples 
must be willing to forsake all things, including 
children ; but there is, after all, less of hard- 
ness or harshness in this than appears on the 
surface. 

In the first place, if rarely happens that the 
son or daughter of a missionary makes ship- 
wreck of morals or fails to do well in a general 
sense in after life. I cannot recall a single in- 
stance of children who have been thus sent 
away from home by missionary parents who 
afterward did badly. There may, of course, 
have been a few such cases ; but in all these 
years during which I have been brought into 
contact with missionary families in England, 
Germany, and the United States I have failed 
to find a single example of the kind. On the 
13 



190 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

other hand, I am of the opinion that special 
blessings attend both parent and child in such 
cases, and that, perhaps, instead of being the 
most unfortunate children in the world, these 
young people are among the most favored. 
We cannot but feel for them, and I only men- 
tion the subject in order to let everyone who 
contemplates the missionary life have the try- 
ing duty placed before his mind in advance, 
lest, when the time of trial comes, he may be 
tempted to forsake his post — as not a few mis- 
sionaries have done — in accordance with the 
idea that the claims of his children release him 
from the higher obligations which he assumes 
when, in obedience to God's call, he devotes 
his life to missionary service. 

While commending a high standard of de- 
votion to all friends of missions at home and 
abroad, I must not omit to give a word of cau- 
tion as to the quality of the devotion needed. 
One of the wayside views which has aroused 
my attention has been that not a few devoted 
Christian men and women, all of them pure 
and good, who have faith to attempt great 
things, but who fail to see the importance of 
maintaining an intelligent devotion. Christian 
devotion should never be blind. Every mis- 
sionary should remember that among the many 
good gifts of God to his children is that of 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. I91 

common sense, and no possible measure of de- 
votion or piety can justify the neglect of this 
gift which all Christians, even more than oth- 
ers, constantly need. Both at home and abroad 
this practical truth is sometimes forgotten. In 
view of what I have witnessed, ''at sundry 
times and in divers places," I feel constrained 
to say that too many very earnest people 
allow themselves to be seriously misled by 
neglecting the exercise of sanctified common 
sense. It is not wise, it is not right to send a 
party of young missionaries into pestilential 
regions before anyone has explored the coun- 
try and before a suitable place has been found 
for a settlement. It is not w^ise, and it cer- 
tainly is not prudent to send out large parties 
of untried persons, sometimes married and 
sometimes single, with little or no culture, lit- 
tle or no experience of life, and with supreme 
devotion as the one towering virtue which is 
expected to hide a multitude of shortcomings. 
It is not right to send abroad men and women 
who manifestly will never be able to acquire 
new languages or do any part of the practical 
w^ork of a missionary. It is not right to send 
out young people who have never lived by 
** faith alone " to found so-called ''faith mis- 
sions.'* There is no real devotion whatever 
in deliberate folly; and some missionary expe- 



192 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

ditions have been so unwisely planned as to 
make it seem that wisdom had been thrown , 
to the winds and devotion made a synonym 
for rashness or blind presumption. The mis- 
sion field is the last place in the world in which 
such a spirit ought to be displayed, and those 
on whom responsibility rests should carefully 
avoid even the appearance of a disregard of 
ordinary prudence. 

SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

While speaking of missionary devotion, I 
wish to add a word concerning what, perhaps, 
may be regarded as only one phase of the sub- 
ject. I mean the importance of maintaining a 
deeply spiritual life. In a successful mission- 
ary field foreign workers soon discover that 
they do not by any means possess a monopoly 
of Christian devotion or of spiritual life, but at 
the same time they will sooner or later find 
that the standard of holy living among their 
converts depends very much upon their own 
example. I never feel any serious misgivings 
concerning the ultimate standard of living 
which will be adopted by our converts so long 
as at one or more points we are successful in 
maintaining a standard of spiritual life which 
approaches more or less nearly that set up in 
the New Testament. A very few Christians 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. I93 

of deep piety, and whose devotion is not merely 
formal, but spontaneous and real, never fail 
powerfully to affect the others with whom they 
are associated ; and, as might be expected, this 
becomes more marked in the case of those 
who naturally look up to them as their leaders. 
Hence all foreign missionaries should be men 
and women who know what it is to experience 
in their own hearts and lives the pow er of the 
truths which they teach. They should never 
go abroad with unsettled doubts or with a 
Christianity which is in all its main features 
purely intellectual. Of all living men the mis- 
sionary, who stands in the midst of people 
v/ho do not even bear the Christian name, needs 
to be able to say, ^' I know'* — needs to 
know v/hom he believes and what he believes. 
It is not only discouraging, but positively 
painful to hear a man or woman who has left 
home and friends and country, and gone to the 
ends of the earth as a messenger of Christ, 
calmly express doubt concerning the possi- 
bility of recognizing a spiritual work in the 
heart. Those who go abroad as messengers 
of the risen Son of God should be able to tes- 
tify, not merely that they believe in him, but 
that they know him, that they are his messen- 
gers, and that they know how to lead those to 
him who need his help. 



194 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

It has often been impressed upon me that 
there is a painful want of intelligent consecra- 
tion on the part of those who support mission- 
ary work at home. It is easy enough to find 
persons who have a clear enough conception 
of what consecration should mean to the mis- 
sionary in the foreign field, but it is a rare 
thing indeed to meet with one who has ever 
attempted to apply the same rule to himself 
which he thinks should in every case be ap- 
plied to his brother who goes abroad. Conse- 
cration is a term which means, or should mean, 
the same thing when applied to all human be- 
ings. It may lead to a given course of conduct 
in the case of one and to a very different course 
in the case of another ; but the motive power in 
each case should be the same. If I as a foreign 
missionary am expected to give up all things 
for the interests of the work, to count home 
and treasure and ease and personal comfort as 
nothing when the interests of the work are at 
stake, my brother in the United States who 
unhesitatingly assigns this standard of duty to 
me should be governed by a spirit precisely 
similar. He may not be called upon to give 
up the things that I may be required to for- 
sake, but his devotion should be as complete, 
and whatever he is required to do should be 
done as cheerfully and with as little question 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 195 

as if he were a inissionaiy in China or Africa. 
It is utterly discouraging, however, and pain- 
fully disheartening to find that the very idea 
of such a missionary devotion in the home land 
is scarcely recognized. Here and there a good 
man can be found who has consecrated all that 
he has and all that he expects to receive to this 
sacred cause. But such cases are very rare indeed. 
So far from it, devotion to the missionary cause 
is usually accepted as meaning at the utmost a 
willingness to give once a year a liberal sum in 
aid of the work. It is an almost unheard-of thing 
for a rich man to give son or daughter, much 
less to give himself, for the work for which our 
Saviour gave life and all things else. Our 
best people are strangely prone to forget that 
the missionary cause represents the salvation 
of the human race. It cannot possibly mean 
less than this, and when we use the term de- 
votion in connection with it we should always 
remember that the only devotion that can pos- 
sibly enable the disciples of Christ to accom- 
plish their gigantic task is one which bears 
the impress of the Master himself — a devotion, 
in other words, v/hich embraces life, with all 
that the term implies. 

I need hardly say that even among our best 
Christians in these United States such devo- 
tion has not yet been realized to any apprecia- 



196 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

ble extent. Great Churches may be found 
the measure of whose practical devotion is 
represented by an average gift of from fifty 
cents to a dollar a year for each believing 
Christian. There is no sacrifice in connection 
with it, no earnest striving in either prayer or 
labor, in aid of the cause. Money is poured 
out like water by thousands of prosperous 
Christians to build palaces in which to live, to 
maintain a style which pertains strictly to a 
world that is perishing, while nations are sit- 
ting in darkness, while millions are living in 
utter want and dying without a ray of hope 
upon their future. There is something about 
this state of things which is more than surpris- 
ing; it is positively alarming; and all earnest 
Christians should awaken to the realization of 
the fact that Christianity itself is made a huge 
inconsistency before the world while such a 
state of things is permitted to continue. 

CONFIDENCE NEEDED. 

I have noted, too, from time to time, as I 
have been going up and down among the home 
churches, that there is a lamentable want of 
confidence in this enterprise as a special work 
given by God to all his people. This form of 
unbelief is not often formulated in words, and 
yet it manifests itself constantly in indirect 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 19^ 

forms. In a general way Christians are willing 
enough to concede that in the beginning a 
commission was given to the early Christians 
to evangehze all nations, but it is not accepted 
generally as a fact that God, in these latter 
days, is by his Holy Spirit summoning his peo- 
ple anew to take up a long-neglected duty and 
complete the task which w^as begun by the 
immediate followers of our Saviour. This want 
of confidence in the work very naturally pro- 
duces something like a spiritual paralysis, which 
hinders all earnest efforts for a grand advance 
along all the lines of missionary endeavor 
throughout the world. One of the first things 
to be done by the promoters of this enterprise 
is to insist more and more strenuously that this 
great question should be settled once for all. 
Let the leaders of religious thought among us 
take it up; let all those in high ecclesiastical 
positions give it their immediate attention ; 
and especially let all leaders of the missionary 
enterprise unshrinkingly press it upon the at- 
tention of the people that Jesus Christ, who 
still lives and walks in the midst of the churches 
as of old, is summoning everyone who bears 
his name to an immediate prosecution of this 
gigantic task. People generally cannot be ex- 
pected to believe with any measure of confi- 
dence until a p;reat truth is set before them 



198 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

which challenges their faith. Their want of 
confidence in the work is hirgely owing to the 
fact that a missionary gospel has not been 
preached to them. The heart of any sincere 
Christian is prepared to believe, and finds no 
pleasure in withholding confidence from any- 
thing that is good ; but God's rule under the 
gospel dispensation is that all great truths 
shall be set before the heart and mind of the 
believer, in order that an intelligent faith may 
find an opportunity for its exercise. I do not, 
therefore, feel like upbraiding our Christian peo- 
ple for want of confidence in this call, but'' 
would rather chide their leaders for not put- 
ting the call distinctly before the Church. Our 
preachers are neglecting their duty, our great 
leaders have failed to realize their responsi- 
bility, and those to whom we naturally look as 
our missionary leaders have failed to impress it 
upon the public that Christ himself is speaking, 
is speaking now, and is calling in a voice which 
he would have all his people upon the globe 
recognize and obey, summoning them to one 
united, stupendous effort to bring all the na- 
tions into his fold. 

THE PRESENT SOCIAL CRISIS. 

A plausible objection to foreign mission work 
at this particular time is sometimes made by 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. I99 

those who see and feel deeply the crisis which 
is upon the Christian Church in the United 
States, and, indeed, in all Christian countries, 
in connection with the extraordinary develop- 
ment of city life. It is a phenomenon hereto- 
fore unknown in the world that in all parts of 
Christendom, and even to some extent in India, 
millions of people are flocking out of the coun- 
try into the great cities. With this concentra- 
tion of population in the great cities new con- 
ditions have arisen, and new questions have 
been started, and symptoms of new movements 
are appearing, some of which are causing grave 
alarm in the minds of our most thoughtful 
people. On the surface it looks as if our Chris- 
tian Churches were not able and were not go- 
ing to be able to grapple with the extraordi- 
nary issues which have thus unexpectedly been 
thrust upon them. Multitudes of people are 
found who cannot speak our language, and in 
the midst of the polyglot tongues of the peo- 
ple the old-time preacher of the Gospel is made 
to feel a sense of weakness to which he was 
formerly wholly unaccustomed. In one well- 
known mission in New York not less than nine 
nationalities were found represented a week or 
two ago. Many of these people could under- 
stand very little English ; and in the midst of 
such a community it must have seemed to the 



:S06 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

workers as if the most urgent phase of mission- 
ary work to be found on the face of the globe 
was that which met them in the midst of that 
great city. 

We can hardly conceal from ourselves the 
fact that some grave dangers seem to threaten 
our civilization. The clamor of the multitude 
of the unemployed is becoming louder every 
year. Unwise and even reckless attempts may 
be made at any time to revolutionize society as 
it now exists. I have no time to discuss the 
ultimate bearings of such questions, but merely 
call your attention to them as powerfully af- 
fecting the views of some of our best people 
concerning the missionary work. *^ Whatever 
may have been true in the past, " they say, *' the 
situation has become so changed that we can 
no longer see the urgency of work in foreign 
lands, and must give our time and our treasure 
to this work v/hich God has placed at our 
doors." I can see clearly and feel deeply the 
force of such remarks, and perhaps it will sur- 
prise you if I say that as a foreign missionary I 
see these things more clearly and feel them 
more deeply than those who, living in our 
great cities, confront these grave questions in 
America. I do not see, however, the force of 
the objection, but, on the other hand, feel 
deeply that the best way to meet the problem 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 201 

which confronts you here is to accept the prior 
comnnission which was £^iven at the beginning of 
our era, and which included all these questions 
which are causing alarm among you here in 
America. 

When tempted to yield to discouragement 
and even despair in the face of the grave diffi- 
culties to which I allude, you should always 
remember that God has never yet been taken 
by surprise. All the terms of this great prob- 
lem have been seen from the beginning, and 
when our Saviour ascended on high and poured 
out his Spirit at Pentecost he included in the 
permanent gift of the Spirit a full provision 
for the emergency which is upon you at this 
present hour. There is nothing in the present 
situation that need alarm anyone, but there are 
many things which undoubtedly call for close 
investigation, for earnest prayer, for increased 
devotion, for greater courage, and for more 
determined effort to meet each emergency as 
it arises. Our friends in the great cities should 
also remember that no policy could prove 
more fatal at the present crisis than to issue a 
summons calling in men from the outposts, 
closing up our widely extended lines, and as- 
suming what would practically be a defensive 
attitude in the face of the enemy. If we were 
to postpone our foreign missionary work until 



202 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

the emergency shall have been met at home, it 
would be tantamount to the case of a great 
army in the country of an enemy suddenly 
taking refuge in a few great cities, fortifying 
their positions, and ordering a cessation of ag- 
gressive warfare at every point until the safety 
of the cities had been secured. 

You cannot afford here in America to as- 
sume a defensive position. In New York, 
Chicago, or any other great city you are on the 
winning side, and must maintain an offensive 
attitude. Christianity was never intended to 
assume a defensive attitude ; her normal atti- 
tude is that of the offensive, and you would 
simply paralyze our militant forces in the 
United States if you gave notice to the w^orld 
that you were no longer able to maintain your 
ordinary operations among the nations. 

You should also remember that in Christian 
service obedience to God is a law not only 
of spiritual life, but a condition of spiritual 
strength. The first great question to be set- 
tled is. What has God commanded us in refer- 
ence to this duty ? Is it true that through the 
centuries that great command has been con- 
stantly held up before our eyes, as clearly as 
if written in letters of fire across the sky, to 
make Christ known to all the nations of the 
world ? If we admit that this is true, then it 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 203 

is gross and glaring disobedience for us even 
to propose to disobey the command. Diso- 
bedience means weakness. I look upon the 
proposal to give a subordinate part to the for- 
eign missionary enterprise for a generation or 
two with undisguised alarm. It is tantamount 
to a deliberate proposal to resign ourselves to 
a state of spiritual paralysis. It means defeat, 
disaster, and humiliation. The idea is, no 
doubt, that there will be more hope for our 
great cities if everything is concentrated here ; 
but this hope will prove utterly delusive. The 
only way of safety is God's way; and God has 
indicated his way so clearly that everyone who 
runs may read. 

My friends in this country in talking with 
me concerning the aspect of society at the 
present time, nearly always take it for granted 
that a missionary returned from the other side 
of the globe must be wholly unacquainted with 
the new condition of things in the social life 
of the United States. It never seems to occur 
to them that the same troubles which are be- 
ginning to appear so portentous in the United 
States, and especially in the great cities, are 
found in active existence in India, and even in 
a more accentuated form than has yet been 
reached in America. In some respects the 
condition of the masses in India is more alarm- 



204 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

ing than anything yet seen in America. In 
deed, the same questions which are attracting 
so much attention here have long been felt in 
every Asiatic country. The poverty of the 
masses in India and China is so extreme that 
the comparative poverty in London and New 
York can hardly be mentioned in the same 
connection, except by way of contrast. Re- 
turning from my mission field a year ago, my 
attention was drawn to an assembly of two or 
three thousand workmen in the city of Cleve- 
land, and I felt not only concerned but almost 
distressed when I looked at them and remem- 
bered that for the first time in my life I had 
seen a large number of unemployed men in an 
American city who were out of money and 
apparently out of work and reduced to the 
verge of positive want. My mind was relieved, 
however, when I learned on inquiry that these 
men and their families were not starving, but 
that they were unwilling to work for so little 
as a dollar a day ! I remembered that in the 
country which I had just left it was perfectly 
feasible to engage a thousand men to work as 
ordinary laborers for a salary of two dollars a 
month. The mere statement of this fact will 
suffice to show you how much more real in- 
dustrial and social troubles are in India than 
in England or the United States. 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 205 

But it is not poverty alone that we have to 
contend with in the great Asiatic countries ; 
the people are helpless, and, indeed, it is to 
this fact that our only security is due. They 
are not capable of putting forth such acts of 
violence as the unemployed classes are found 
attempting to do in Western regions. I have 
seen not only poverty but famine and death 
stalking abroad through the land. I have 
lived in the midst of war and pestilence and 
famine ; but if given my choice I would at any 
time accept both war and pestilence in prefer- 
ence to the awful scourge which famine, even 
in its lightest phases, never fails to inflict. At 
this very time many of our statesmen in India 
are perplexed with the question of redundancy 
of population. I could take you, if there, 
through districts of country where a thousand 
people live upon every square mile of land ; 
and this enormous population is not reckoned 
by counting in large cities with hundreds of 
thousands of inhabitants, but consists simply 
of the rural population living in small mud- 
walled villages. 

As famines are more and more prevented 
by the distribution of grain along the lines of 
railways and canals, and as sanitary measures 
of various kinds are introduced among the 
people, the ratio of increase is steadily rising, 
14 



206 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

and statesmen begin to ask what the end will 
be. How are these vast multitudes who are 
almost starving now to be fed in the next 
generation ? What will India do when her 
population rises, as it bids fair to rise, to five 
hundred milHon ? These questions confront 
the missionary, and appeal to him for solution 
more imperatively than to any other person. 
You must not for a moment allow yourselves 
to think that we have no troubles abroad, no 
problems to solve, no difficult questions to an- 
swer, and no dangers threatening both the 
stability of society and the success of Chris- 
tianity. 

So far from feeling alarm in view of these 
apparently dangerous issues I look upon them 
with serene confidence in God, and without a 
shadow of misgiving as to the ultimate result 
of present agitations. If Christianity cannot 
deal successfully with such social disturbances 
as these it will stand a confessed failure before 
the world. It was just for the settlement of such 
questions that Christ came to earth. We 
hardly know what we mean when we say he 
came to save men, and tacitly attach so narrow 
an interpretation to the word ^^save*' as to 
limit its meaning and limit the possibilities 
which otherwise would be within easy grasp 
of his disciples of the present generation. I 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 20/ 

have believed for some years that it will be 
given to the Christian missionaries of the 
world to solve some of the most portentous 
social questions of the present day. So far 
from waiting till you settle all these issues in 
Europe and America we propose to move on 
steadily, and with God's help to contribute our 
share toward the introduction of a basis of so- 
ciety which will be adapted to the condition 
of men and women in all the nations, and which 
will make it possible for the human race to live 
in peace, quietness, and happiness throughout 
the whole length and breadth of our wide 
earth. 

LIVING LINKS. 
I have been deeply impressed by an observa- 
tion made in many parts of the country of the 
interest which missionary donors feel in the 
destination of the money which they give for 
the work. It is often said that Christians give 
from principle, and should have such confi- 
dence in those who are responsible for the 
work that they will be willing to forego the 
desire for further information concerning the 
use to which their gifts are applied, and deny 
themselves the gratification of what seems to 
be little more than a natural curiosity on the 
subject. It is very easy to present such a view 
and to defend it ; but in this, as in many other 



208 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

cases, we are obliged to accept facts as we find 
them. It is just possible that all Christians 
should be so disinterested as to feel no personal 
concern in a matter of this kind ; but, as a 
matter of fact, they are not ; and for one I 
strongly incline to the belief that it is some- 
thing better than mere curiosity which creates 
a desire on the part of so many to follow their 
offerings with their prayers, and watch care- 
fully the development of the work which they 
set on foot in distant lands. Undoubtedly, as 
a matter of fact, it is found much more easy to 
induce ordinary persons to give for a specific 
object than simply to give in response to a 
general appeal. We are all so constituted that 
our sympathies can only be drawn out by 
examples which we can comprehend, and which 
are so brought before the mind that we can 
appreciate the exact bearings of each case. 
More than that, it is perfectly reasonable that 
a benevolent person should have a desire to 
found some special work and w^atch its de- 
velopment just as he w^ould plant a tree and 
watch over its growth from year to year. 
Hence, for some years past I have not hesi- 
tated to make special appeals, both to the 
public and to individuals, inviting them to 
support special objects. One becomes respon- 
sible for the maintenance of a school, another 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 2O9 

for the education of a given number of boys 
and girls, a third for the education of one or 
more theological students, a fourth for the 
support of one or more preachers, a fifth for 
the erection of a chapel or other building, 
while in rare instances persons assume greater 
responsibilities and become permanent sup- 
porters of a missionary family. 

This policy has been happily named, by Dr. 
Pierson, I think, ^' Living Links.'* It is of the 
utmost importance that the supporters of mis- 
sions should be linked to the work abroad, and 
no bond will be found so enduring as that 
which unites a living donor to the living object 
of his beneficence, w^hose home is in some dis- 
tant land. So very few can go there that it 
becomes the more desirable that all who can 
possibly do so should strive to support substi- 
tutes, so that the Christian in America, who 
would gladly spend his days in the foreign 
field if it were within the range of possibility, 
is enabled to comfort his heart with the 
thought that although not there in person he 
is represented by one who can speak the lan- 
guage more fluently, who knows the people 
more perfectly, and who can not only worthily 
represent him, but perhaps accomplish more 
than he could by going there in person. 
After giving some personal attention to this 



2IO WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

subject I have become persuaded that very- 
great possibilities are opened up by the adop- 
tion of such a poHcy. All our leading churches 
should make haste to embrace the privilege of 
being represented abroad, not by some obscure 
native preacher who lives on the salary of four 
or five dollars a month, but by a missionary 
family sent out from the United States. In 
the instances in which this has been done the 
result has been eminently satisfactory. Within 
the bounds of the mission field we have now 
a number of American missionaries who are 
supported by single congregations in this 
country ; and in every case the church which 
supports a missionary, so far from lessening its 
contributions in consequence, has actually in- 
creased them. 

I believe unhesitatingly in the policy, and if 
it were in my power I should rejoice to see a 
hundred of our churches, or perhaps in some 
cases two or three churches combined, assum- 
ing the support of men and women abroad, 
with whom they can be kept in constant cor- 
respondence, and through whom they may be 
able to get stores of information which they 
could never find in any other way. The gen- 
eral adoption of such a policy would give a 
Httle trouble, it is true. It would add to the 
difficulties of our accountants, and add to the 



Wayside views. 211 

labors of those who would be intrusted with 
the correspondence necessary for the success- 
ful working of such a plan. But what is labor 
for if it cannot be applied to a noble purpose 
such as this? It would be economy, from a 
financial point of view, and it would be a bless- 
ing to those who are responsible for the work 
both at home and abroad. 

THE INSTINCT OF VICTORY. 

If time would only permit me I would 
mention one other impression which has been 
made upon me in my coming and going, both 
in India and the United States. I refer to the 
despondent tone in which many representa- 
tives of the cause allow themselves to speak 
of our missionary work and its prospects. 
Not long ago I met a very intelligent gentle- 
man on an ocean steamer, who expressed some 
surprise to me at the cheerful tone which I 
had adopted in a brief address given to the 
passengers on missionary work in India. He 
said that he was greatly gratified to learn that 
there were missionaries abroad who were not 
only cheerful and hopeful, but positively 
buoyant and sanguine while prosecuting a 
work of so great difficulties. He went on to 
say that in many places he had attended mis- 
sionary meetings and had almost uniformly 



2 12 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 

found them extremely gloomy occasions. To 
borrow his own expressive phrase, ^' The very 
atmosphere of the place seemed blue as 
indigo.'* Instead of a missionary meeting 
the people seemed to him to have come to- 
gether to talk of the wickedness of the world, 
the badness of human nature, the certainty 
that things generally were going to the bad, 
and constantly increasing evidence of the 
world's depravity, and, without formulating 
their feeling in so many words, practically im- 
pressing upon those present the idea that the 
great missionary task of the age was hopeless, 
so far as its ultimate success was concerned. 

I had no difficulty in understanding what 
this gentleman meant, although he expressed 
himself perhaps in more vigorous language 
than I should have liked to employ. Un- 
doubtedly there is such a spirit abroad in 
the Christian world. I do not care to inquire 
concerning its origin, but we are confronted by 
the melancholy fact that too many of the 
friends of missions have ceased to believe in 
victory. I have read the New Testament with 
some care these many years, I have searched 
through and through its pages for light to 
guide me in the difficult work in which I am 
personally engaged, but up to the present 
time I have utterly failed to find any trace of 



WAYSIDE VIEWS. 213 

the gospel of despair. I have searched in vain 
for any indication that there is no hope of vic- 
tory in the work which God has given me. On 
the other hand, I cannot but beheve that the 
Saviour, whose I am and w4iom I serve, is for- 
ever a victor. Satan's head has long ages ago 
been bruised beneath his victorious feet ; and 
as we are heirs to all that belongs to him we 
are heirs to his victory. Hence we who are at 
the front have no other thought than that of 
winning the battle in which w^e are engaged. 
We never expect to lower the banner which 
has been placed in our hands ; and as the 
years and ages pass along w^e confidently 
expect the strongholds of sin, one after an- 
other, to be beaten down and temples of right- 
eousness to rise upon the right hand and the 
left, until at last not only the great empire in 
v^hich we chance to live, but all the kingdoms 
of this earth shall become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of his Christ. We accept the task 
which has been given us as one embracing 
nothing less than this. If this view is correct, 
and if this is the spirit in which we ought to 
work, the Church at home should manifest the 
same spirit and present her gifts with a holy 
enthusiasm and unquestioning faith in the 
final result which is to be secured. I cannot, 
however, shut my eyes to the fact that a de- 



214 \VAYSIDE VIEWS, 

spondency very much like that described by 
my friend on the steamer is pervading too 
many of our Christian communities in England 
and the United States. The missionary ban- 
ner seems to me to be drooping in many places ; 
the missionary songs seem to be losing their 
joyous fervor, and the missionary prayers 
which ascend to the throne of grace do not 
seem to be offered with full confidence that the 
thing asked for shall surely be granted. 

The time has come, and more than come, 
for a more hopeful proclamation of the great 
missionary gospel which God has given his 
people, and which he has set more clearly than 
ever before them during the closing years of 
this eventful century. Ours is a gospel of 
hope, a gospel of life, a gospel of light, and a 
gospel of holy triumph. Let us accept it as 
such, let us offer it to the world as such, and 
let us proclaim it with a confidence which shall 
exclude the faintest shadow of doubt from our 
hearts and minds. If we go to work in this 
spirit, and if we faithfully lift up a standard to the 
people which shall be worthy of the best tradi- 
tions of the New Testament era, the greatest 
works which have been witnessed since the day 
of Pentecost will appear on the right and the 
left throughout the whole length and breadth 
of the great Christendom of the present day. 



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